It’s no secret that “the perfume island” no longer owes its name to the ylang-ylang plantations, but rather to the smell of overflowing garbage cans…
The entire waste collection and treatment system needs to be reviewed. The Sidevam 976 (Intercommunal Syndicate for the Elimination and Development of Waste in Mayotte) is not doing its job properly. The inter-municipalities, newly entrusted with the “collection” competence, are therefore trying to get rid of it and replace it by private companies, but the matter is complex. According to Ben Hanafi, the person in charge of waste issues at Cadema, “The elected representatives of the inter-municipalities also sit on Sidevam, so they refuse to let it lose the market. As a result, Mayotte is overflowing with garbage! “The Sidevam agents break the trucks because they don’t want to work,” he reveals.
Recycling in India and South Africa…
But the biggest scandal in our opinion lies in the absence of recycling channels in Mayotte. The company Citéo has installed skips for sorting. In addition to the fact that the latter is very little done because of the lack of environmental education of the population, Citéo only deals with household waste. It is sent to a treatment center in Longoni to be sorted and sent to India and South Africa for recycling. As for industrial waste, it ends up in the ISDND (Installation de stockage des Déchets non dangereux) to be…buried! Tons of plastic waste have been accumulated there for years. “We don’t know how many tons of plastic waste are produced each year in Mayotte. The data does not exist,” says Patrice Roux, a service provider working for Citéo. By Nora Godeau, correspondent in Mayotte for the Journal des Archipels Photo: J.Rombi
