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Urban dwellers collect natural resources from rural areas that end up being used as food, fuel, clothing, utensils, and industrial raw materials. The person or institution that obtains the natural resources rarely depletes them in their entirety. Therefore, there are always substances that are discarded after primary use and then result in waste that has undesirable consequences on the environment.
It is understandable for humans to discard the unusable or unusable part of natural resources because it is out of place in homes or institutions. But there are always possibilities to recycle and reuse these matters if there is the right mix of policies and technologies. Various species delight in what humans throw away as waste.
Once, the former director general of the Ethiopia Environmental Protection Authority, Tewolde Gebre (PhD), said that some of these species, directly or as vectors, make us feel bad. Unused or used biological resources are collected in urban areas and disposed of as waste at disposal sites. This is why the biological waste from Addis Ababa has accumulated in Reppi.
As it is an integral part of the expanding city, it makes sense to clean up Addis Ababa by removing Reppi’s waste. How? Burning it would be an answer. But then what about the obvious harm to residents who would be forced to inhale the smoke and incur serious health consequences?
The agreement between Ethiopian Electric Power and Cambridge Industrial Engineering Company created a situation where waste could be used to generate social, economic and environmental benefits in addition to eliminating it. Under the agreement, the company used cutting-edge technologies and practices to collect the gas that has been subjecting humans to the stench, burn that stinky gas, and generate electricity with the heat generated by burning. This writer recently had the opportunity to visit Reppi’s waste-to-energy facility.
Now things have changed. Instead of suffering from home due to the stench, humans can sit with additional electricity to the grid. “Let him give us light at night, cook the food, turn on the washing machine to clean our clothes, heat the water to clean our body, bring images and sound to our television screen, etc., this would only have been enough. A blessing.
But there is more. “Most of Reppi’s stench comes from the gas we call methane,” said Dr. Tewolde, “this bonded gas also causes us other major harm. As we all know, global warming threatens us with massive global climate change. Warming arises from the greenhouse gases that we emit into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that the sun generously gives us as energy to power all life.
When it is present in excess, even what gives us life can take that life away. One of the most powerful greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and thus threaten life is this stinky methane. “
Its ability to trap heat in the biosphere is 24 times greater than that of carbon dioxide. “Therefore, burning methane to generate electricity also produces the greenhouse gas that we all continuously exhale, this gas, which we call dioxide. of carbon, it has only 4 percent of the heat trapping capacity of methane, “said Dr. Tewolde.
Ethiopia’s plan is to develop along a green economic path and become a middle-income country with net zero gas emissions by 2025. This does not mean that humans will stop breathing.
The need to remove the carbon dioxide that we exhale and emit from various economic activities is one of our main reasons for trying to make Ethiopia’s forests as extensive and well managed as possible.
Increasing vegetation cover, especially forests, would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into permanent biomass through photosynthesis. Therefore, in addition to increasing the supply of electricity, “Reppi’s waste-to-energy plan is aimed at changing the methane continuously leaking from the landfill and will help us achieve our goal of making Ethiopia a net emitter. of zero or carbon neutral greenhouse gases by 2025 “. Dr. Tewolde said.
Along with the biomass that comes to Addis Ababa from rural areas to produce methane in Reppi. The mineral nutrients that continue in those rural areas enrich the soil through the nutrient cycle and thus produce more biomass resources more effectively. If these mineral resources do not return to rural areas, those areas will gradually become nutrient deficient and therefore less capable of producing biomass in a sustainable way.
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Therefore, in addition to generating electricity from biological waste, the leftover sludge is also dried and sent back to rural areas as organic fertilizer. This can be done easily and generate additional income.
In fact, the Reppi project now contributes to the nation’s power grid, saves Addis Ababa from the stench that has been coming out of Reppi, and helps improve our health as well as reduce our climate change footprint.
While the effort made so far is promising, it does not mean it is adequate. More work remains to be done to turn resource wealth into income. For this to happen, in addition to raising public awareness about waste management, it is extremely important to encourage investors to get involved in the sector. Furthermore, states should learn from Addis Ababa’s best experience in managing waste and creating jobs for citizens.
