Zoom Lion and the Wheelie Bins

There is a new noise on the streets of Koforidua. If we didn’t have enough already, we now have to contend with the music which signals the arrival of the Zoom Lion refuse collection truck. The music is loud (of course) and mainly of the gospel variety. Fortunately they are not using Praye’s Zoom Lion Song produced for a ‘Keep Ghana Clean’ campaign. It has the inspiring lyric ‘next to Godliness is cleanliness (my brother), If you live on health, no more sickiness (my sister)’.

Zoom Lion is the intriguingly named contractor which is gradually sweeping up all the district assembly refuse contracts. They have done a good job in tidying up the skips (not sure whether they have designated these as civic amenity sites, but they probably will) and they do clean some public places.

Over the Easter weekend they began the next phase of their operation. I got back from the coast to find the neighbourhood dotted with smart blue or orange wheelie bins. There is even one in our compound. Nothing has been said about it. Nobody seems to know quite what to do with it. Still in its plastic wrapper, it keeps appearing in different places between the houses. They seem far too nice to put rubbish in and as Zoom Lion will charge to empty them they probably won’t get much use. While there are plenty of small boys to take your rubbish to the nearest skip and you can burn the flammable stuff in your yard, the wheelie bins seem a bit pointless. What will happen to them is anybody’s guess. Ghanaians have a knack of recycling otherwise redundant equipment. You can be looking at the girl carrying chilled water sachets on her head, when you realise the receptacle being used is a drawer from a fridge/freezer. The car wheel and oil drum barbeques are other favourites.

There is no doubt that Ghana could be significantly improved with some investment in tidying up and better disposal of waste materials, but are domestic wheelie bins really part of the solution?