Where there's smoke

Smoky garden fires are ubiquitous in Nairobi

Fairly regularly, I am awakened in the middle of the night by the smell of smoke filling our house.

That’s not as alarming as it might sound, nor as rare as one might wish.

The source of the smoke does not come from inside our house. It’s not caused by an electrical malfunction or something left burning on the stove. The source is external, and the cause very basic. Most of our neighbors burn their garden clippings in their yards, and often, household garbage as well.

It’s a daily (and nightly) problem here in Nairobi. The city, indeed the whole country, has no public, residential garbage collection system. If you want someone take away your trash, you have to pay for a private service, which is what we do. But a lot of people don’t have access to collection services, or don’t want to pay for it if they do.

So they burn their rubbish.

Technically, trash/garden fires are illegal. That’s if you read the Nairobi City Council Bylaws. But no one seems to enforce the rules.

Anywhere you go in Nairobi, you can see fire smoke billowing across neighborhoods. It adds to the mix of diesel and gas fumes from unregulated vehicle emissions, dust from unpaved roads, and other household and industry pollutants. Throw in the methane from herds of urban livestock and you get a sense of the air quality concerns with which we live daily.

I have no way of measuring the impact of these garden fires on the local air quality and those of us who breathe it. But it’s clearly not good. They say that if you can smell wood smoke, you're breathing pollution that is hazardous to your health.

Wood smoke contains both gases and fine particles. The microscopic bits are so small they easily infiltrate homes, even when all the doors and windows are shut and the house well insulated. Also they don’t go away quickly, but tend to linger at ground level – sometimes for days.  Wood smoke contains toxic air pollutants like benzene, formaldehyde, acrolein, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). All smoke contains carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.

To make matters worse, the fires in our neighborhood often contain plastics. The smell is acrid and cloying – and the impacts even worse. Burning plastic releases carbon monoxide, dioxin, and furans into the air - pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And the smoke particles settle in the soil and water, further spreading their toxic range.

I’ve become something of a crusader against open fires in our neighborhood. I have gone dozens of times to knock on strangers’ gates asking them to put out their fires. I’ve asked nicely. I’ve asked less nicely. I’ve reached the hose over the walls around our compound to douse out the fires I could reach. I’ve rallied our landlord and the various staff around our compound to help with the cause.

But for the time being, it’s a losing battle.

Burning garbage is deeply embedded in Kenyan culture and practices – as is cooking indoors on wooden fires. Potential harmful effects from the smoke simply take a back seat to other needs and practices – like the lack of alternative ways of treating garbage.

But even when there are alternatives, getting people to change long-held practices is difficult, at best. 

In Kenya, as in many developing countries, countless international development programs have tried to convince people to use improved cookstoves instead of unvented indoor fires to cook, heat water, and warm their homes. The goal has been to address health concerns, environmental issues, and the human risks and burdens that come with having to collect firewood or other fuel to stoke these fires. Over and over the cookstove programs have failed, succumbing to the rejection that comes with things imposed (or even proposed) by outsiders looking in.  

In the meantime, the air pollution from indoor fires in the developing world continues to kill some 1.5 million women and children (who spend more time indoors than men) each year.

What about outdoor fires?  In Nairobi, the threat of City Council fines carries no weight, since the rules prohibiting fires are never enforced. This is rather remarkable in a country where police and other authorities regularly shake people down for bribes for minor or made-up traffic offenses, and corruption is rampant across public and political sectors.

There have been public health campaigns about the noxious effects of smoky fires, which have raised awareness to some extent. But that is only the first of multiple steps needed to actually change behaviors.

Increasingly, small solar powered devices are taking root across Kenya. The land has plenty of sunshine, and the costs of solar-powered cookers, lamps, water heaters, and such are becoming affordable enough that even poorer Kenyans are gaining access to them. Though their use is still limited, acceptance of these devices seems greater than for the various efficiency stoves brought in by well-meaning foreign do-gooders that depend on wood or other fuel.

As for private trash burning, there is clearly a dire need for incentives to adopt alternative practices.

As I’ve noted in a previous blog, good examples do exist of promising private, community-based garbage pickup and recycling programs, such as Nairobi’s Matare Environmental Youth Group. Located in one of the city’s biggest slums, the program has created jobs for youth, fostered civic engagement and leadership, and, by making communities cleaner, has also made them safer. Former rubbish-strewn spots have been made into recreational ones, further enhancing the physical and social environment. And according to neighborhood residents, the program has changed the way they handle garbage – in other words it has inspired positive behavioral change.

The potential for such programs is huge. In cities, like Lusaka, Zambia, for example, informal waste collection, sorting, recovery, and disposal account for 60% of urban jobs (UN Habitat).  The trick is to organize and support informal waste management programs so that they are safe and sustainable.

And if that requires government or donor subsidies, so be it.

The results are good for everyone. No smoke and mirrors. And especially, no smoke.