Most residents do not know how to manage waste except how to dump it.

The beautiful mangroves of the Wouri estuary besides being wonderful and nice to see are facing the double threat of being wiped away by waste accumulation and deforestation.

The commercial and industrial city of Douala produces waste matter at a rate that outpaces its capacity to dump them in a safe and environmentally-sound manner. Solid waste in the economic capital is a by-product of a broad spectrum of industrial, service, manufacturing, market and household processes that result to pollution via uncontrolled discharge.

People living closely to mangrove forests in the “Bois des Singes” and Bonendale neighbourhoods have turned mangrove forests into dumping grounds. Douala residents don’t seem to know how to manage waste except how to dump it. This is an attitude that now presents the single greatest challenge to any plastic waste management strategy. A resident of “Bois des Singes”, Oumarou Garba, revealed that the practice is to dump wastes directly under mangrove bushes or fell the tree for kitchen fuel.

In spite of efforts by the Ministry of Environment, Protection of Nature and Sustainable Development and the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, most of the existing mangroves are very affected by an array of dumping sites, primarily made of plastics and textile fabrics from around the city, as well as from surrounding residential houses. Experts say some 2,000 metric tonnes of industrial and kitchen wastes are produced in Douala daily. The Hygiene and Sanitation Company of Cameroon, HYSACAM, holds that as much as 1,350 metric tonnes are properly dumped while 400-600 metric tonnes of the waste cannot be gotten rid of for proper disposal due to inaccessibility and low-flying electric cables in some areas.

As a result, a majority is carried by rainwater through open ditch that discharge unto the tidal flat of the estuary where mangroves are found. Even when properly dumped, a large quantity finds itself back to the city through the processes of recovery by jobless people who put them back into the economy for reuse. Again, this waste which includes a good amount of plastic bags and containers end up being deposited under the trees.

A study by the Cameroon Mangrove Conservation Network, while reporting enormous quantity of waste accumulation under mangroves of the creeks at “Bois des Singes”, noted that plastic materials which have sung into the soil do not allow free flow of water and air, thereby choking the soil and plant life, as well as preventing the development of mangrove seedlings from properly growing.