Community Participation, the Missing Link towards Sustainable Solid Waste Management: Lessons from Bindura Town, Zimbabwe

The past decades have demonstrated the failures of top-down approaches towards waste management especially in developing countries. This has not only been attributed to technical and financial challenges, but also the low involvement of communities in service delivery. Whereas every person generates waste, they continue to be looked at as passive recipients of municipality services. Ultimately, citizens fail to recognize their role in waste management and become unwilling to either pay for service delivery or participate in clean-up campaigns. This paper reports on observation about community participation in service delivery in Bindura Town (Zimbabwe). Exploring community’s innovations, attitudes and practices in solid waste management should provide lessons to policy makers on how service delivery can be enhanced by involving citizens.