Wiki Tano

This week there was a group of very motivated students from EF who were doing their community service part of their gap year. This community service mainly consisted of meetings with waste management companies and for them apparently, going to the beach. However, for us their visit meant a lot of interesting new information about the waste management situation on Zanzibar. We could accompany them on the visit to the Zanrec office where Justin, the director gave us a presentation about the company and its vision. He started of by stating that the amount of tourists had doubled from 162,242 to 376000 in the last year and that each tourist produced about 2kg of waste a day. This emphasised the importance of proper waste management. Zanrec is a private company that was founded in 2011 by Swedish investors. Their main goal is to clean Zanzibar and keep it clean. They are not an NGO so their services require a fee. Their main customers are hotels and restaurants. However, they also commit to initiatives in the local communities. Together with NGO's they want to motivate the locals in Jambiani and Kendua to collect and separate their trash.

Even though they are taking up a huge part of the waste management on Zanzibar, Jeffery said that Zanrec is experiencing some difficulties with the local government. This is quite strange because the government funded waste management system is as much as none existent. They charge Zanrec a fee to collect trash in different districts because it is said to be governmental property. They are always looking at opportunities to expand their services, but due to governmental fees and the transport costs combined it remains a struggle. They fund their operations by fees and reselling their waste to third parties. For a fee Chako can collect bottles from the collection site when needed. Chakos goal is however to catch the glass before it reaches the site. We would soon find out why.

After the presentation we payed a visit to the waste collection site. It was gross. And huge. It seemed like a never ending waste dessert. Rotting food remains mixed with used hotel slippers lay scattered on the forest floor. The smell, only made worse by the heat, was awful. We helped the Chako employees to collect some bottles. Our respect for these guys grew as we watched them plunge trough the dirt with what seemed like no disgust or hesitation at all. I must confess that I wasn't as dedicated as them and sticked to the top layer. This was a huge moment of realisation for us. Seeing the dump in real life for the first time, it dawned on us how big the problem was an how deep it was rooted.

On Thursday, the day came to teach children of the international school of Zanzibar something about plastic recycling and the effect on their daily lives. A tricky part was to keep their attention for two hours with three different presentations to listen to. First they had a general presentation about the environment in which they live and how long some products take to decompose. The young kids were focused and shocked that for example a fishing line takes 600 years to decompose as even you might not even know yet. Perhaps you know how much a plastic bottles takes? Yes indeed, it lasts 450 years to decompose. Not only the kids but even our group was surprised with the numbers that we saw. When dumping your waste, you don't always dwell upon the effect of waste on the earth. After a while the attention of the children was slipping with all the information to absorb. Luckily we had some things in store for them about our presentation that would hopefully entertain them. Throughout our presentation we told the children different sorts of information about the 7 different identification codes of plastics, the recycling process, what we can produce with the process and showed some product examples that we brought with us. Eventually we tested their knowledge via a quiz and the winner would receive a small price. Remarkably to us, some of the kids - that are between the age of 6- 10 years- already knew many things about plastics and specific names and applications. So you see, educating children in primary school about plastic recycling is paying off and we can't stress this enough.

As mentioned last week we have had many problems with finding the right gearbox. This week was our final final deadline to make a decision and order it! We came down to 2 different products. One in The Netherlands from a reliable company but very expensive and not a hundred percent perfect. The other one from a less reliable source, a Russian man online with a one man business, with a very good price and the exact gearbox that we want. So Monday ended up to be a day with a lot of debates about whether we should chose the cheap one or the reliable one... We have had discussions with the founders of the company and also with our coordinator from the TU Delft and eventually came to the conclusion to go for the Russian one and trust the mans word. This means it is finally being produced and soon being shipped here! We are so excited for it to arrive!

Tuesday we have been struggling with a very annoying piece of the machine: Making a hole in the barrel of the injection moulding machine (see pictures). We had to go back to the labyrinth with all the little engineering shops to buy a specific tool we needed, an electric metal saw, to be able to make the impossible hole. With a lot of help from the employees we managed to make it work and we got some good results! Not the most perfect result but it was good enough for now. Secondly, we wanted to make a thread on the barrel so that we could attach the nozzle. Fundi Edy came with the tool to make it but sadly it was unsuccessful because it was a tool for plastic barrels so it wasn't strong enough for metal. On the other hand, miracles do happen! Fundi Edy disappeared with the machine part for over an hour and unexpectedly he came back with a thread on it. We are beginning to wonder where there could possibly be any more astonishments left!!

Last week we had some contact with the famous welder guy to make us a frame! Thursday we went to see the result and unfortunately he didn't really held on to the drawing and its measurements we gave him. But at least it was in the right directing so with some more work it would turn into what we had in mind.