- Accumulations of trash lie below the tranquil waters of Lake Malawi National Park, a problem local environmentalists say likely extends throughout Lake Malawi, the world’s fourth-largest freshwater lake by volume.
- They blame dumping by lake users as well as poor waste handling upland within Malawi and in Mozambique and Tanzania, which share the lake’s shoreline. Malawi does not have public waste recycling facilities and all municipalities dump waste in open landfills where it risks draining into river systems.
- Divers with a local nonprofit volunteer collecting lake garbage in return for training and the use of diving equipment to make a living guiding tourists.
- Meanwhile, the Malawian government is working with universities to map and eventually clean up garbage hotspots in the lake as it works to strengthen waste management in the country.
CAPE MACLEAR, Malawi — On a clear August morning, three scuba divers disappeared under the waters of Lake Malawi. Above them, serenity: The clear water rippled gently, spick-and-span Cape Maclear Beach was empty of tourists and the shoreline trees stood calm.
Half an hour later, having covered an area just 30 meters (100 feet) from the beach, the divers emerged, each hauling a bag half-full with garbage.
“This is only a fraction of what’s down there, yet we also cleaned the area last week. That’s our challenge,” one of the divers, Felix Sinosi, told Mongabay. He has been a scuba diver on this shoreline for the past eight years and now trains others.
“You won’t believe the waste volumes down there. … And I am talking about the Cape Maclear area only,” said Sinosi, age 31.
Sinosi and 14 other divers are part of an underwater garbage collection project in Lake Malawi National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the southern end of the lake. The park is known for its radiant cichlids (family Cichlidae), the lake’s prized ornamental fish that have drawn global research interest for their explosive diversity. Local environmentalists say the garbage problem likely extends throughout Lake Malawi, the world’s fourth-largest freshwater lake by volume.
Kenneth McKaye, a Finnish marine biologist whose research led to the national park’s establishment in 1980, introduced the underwater garbage collection initiative in 2023 after noticing the problem during dives with tourists.
“Visibility was poor,” Violet Zacharia, manager and volunteer coordinator for Health, Education, Environment and Economic Development (HEEED), the Malawian nonprofit that’s implementing the project, told Mongabay. “Tourists could see the garbage, which affected their experience. It would not be wise to take visitors diving, snorkeling or swimming where they must encounter significant garbage.”
The project aims to protect biodiversity, enhance tourism and economically empower beach communities in the national park. According to HEEED, the waste endangers human and animal health through the release of microplastics as it decomposes. It can also entangle and smother aquatic life and cover fish nurseries and courtship grounds, inhibiting reproduction.
A waste management problem
Sinosi blames the abundant trash in the lake on dumping by fishers, travelers on the lake’s ferries, tourists, tourism facilities and communities on the shores and beyond. “In Malawi, we don’t have a good culture and good systems on waste management,” he said.
A study of waste collected by volunteers on three Lake Malawi beaches totaling 32 hectares (79 acres) tallied nearly 500,000 items of anthropogenic litter between 2015 and 2018; 80% of it was plastic.
Local environmentalist Charles Mkoka also attributed the lake’s underwater pollution to poor waste handling upland within Malawi and in Mozambique and Tanzania, which share the lake’s shoreline.
Malawi produces 75,000 metric tons of plastic waste annually, 80% of it single-use and non-recyclable. The country’s National Waste Management Strategy says more than 70% of waste is discarded indiscriminately. Malawi does not have public waste recycling facilities and all municipalities dump waste in open landfills where it risks draining into river systems.
For its part, Mozambique discards 100,000 metric tons of plastic waste annually into the environment. In 2018, Tanzania generated 315,000 metric tons of plastic waste, 29,000 metric tons of which leaked into the country’s waterways, according to the IUCN.
Mkoka said inadequate public awareness, weak enforcement of waste disposal regulations and insufficient infrastructure in the three countries make it difficult to control the indirect but continuous flow of garbage into Lake Malawi.
“There’s a clear and direct link between poor upland waste practices and the growing environmental pressures on Lake Malawi’s aquatic ecosystem,” said Mkoka, executive director of the Coordination Union for Rehabilitation of the Environment (CURE), a coalition of environmental NGOs in Malawi.
Diverting some of the waste stream
REDUCE. RE-USE. RECYLE. These words, painted in blue, speak out from the wall of a grass-thatched building on Cape Maclear Beach, one of Malawi’s tourism hotspots.
Inside, the building is part factory, part dumpsite — literally. Cartons, plastic bags, single-use plastics, egg trays, used tea bags, glass and plastic bottles, ragged clothes, old fish nets and nondescript debris pile up in bins.
“This is not rubbish,” chuckled Zacharia. “They are raw materials. Not much of this waste goes to waste here.”
The building is the center of HEEED’s underwater garbage removal and recycling initiative. Some of the waste comes from cleanups on the beach and in the village nearby, but more comes from the bottom of the lake, collected by Sinosi and other divers. The project has trained 15 divers, who volunteer collecting lake garbage in return for the skills they acquire and the use of diving equipment to make a living guiding tourists.
Sinosi is the project’s dive master. Born and raised in the community, he learned to dive from tourists and perfected his skills with the project.
Geeta Ronald, one of his students, has been diving for two years. She said she treasures the experience because it has provided her with a livelihood and enabled her to appreciate the true value the lake holds to the community.
“Now I can look after myself and assist my parents with some expenses through what I earn as an underwater tour guide,” Ronald, age 20, told Mongabay. “We make good money, especially during hot seasons when traffic of tourists rises.” In a good month, she said, she can make as much as $114. (Malawi’s per capita GDP was $508 in 2024, according to the World Bank.)
The lake is “far more beautiful below than on the surface,” she said — something she didn’t realize until she learned to dive. “There’s so much life down there. The saddening part is the waste but we’re helping to clean it and raise awareness in our village about how indiscriminate waste dumping affects the lake and livelihoods,” she said.
The divers go underwater three times a week to remove waste. Back on shore, they sort it and clean and dry the recyclables.
From the factory come assorted products, handmade by volunteers and HEEED employees from the community: coasters, chairs and baskets from bottle tops, handbags from disposable plastic bags, tumblers and candleholders from glass bottles and hand-bound books and cards from recycled paper. Tourists are major customers, but the project is exploring an international market to generate more revenue.
Not all garbage is recyclable in this workshop though; the remainder is collected by another local organization: Sustainable Cape Maclear. In the absence of any public waste management service in the area, this organization collects trash from homes, schools and resorts. It recycles some and turns some into compost to reduce reliance on inorganic fertilizer that runs off farms and pollutes the lake. The rest it incinerates.
Next steps
While these initiatives are registering results, they have yet to break the cycle of waste buildup in the lake. The area Sinosi, Ronald and a fellow diver named Adina Ericas, age 23, combed during Mongabay’s August visit, had undergone the same treatment just a week earlier.
“We clean a spot this week; more waste collects next week. The garbage moves in from elsewhere especially rapidly during strong winds over the lake and rainy season,” Sinosi said.
Any long-term or lake-wide fix will require replicating HEEED’s underwater cleanup activities and strengthening upland waste management systems, according to Mkoka.
The Malawi Environment Protection Authority (MEPA), a regulatory agency, said it is engaging local universities to map underwater garbage hotspots in the lake toward drawing up a cleanup strategy. Meanwhile, fishers, divers and tourists are reporting increasing waste, Aubren Chirwa, MEPA’s environment information education manager, told Mongabay.
Established in 2017, MEPA has been running public campaigns against waste dumping and working with district councils, NGOs and the private sector to improve upstream waste collection. The agency is also cracking down on single-use plastics in the country. This follows a court ruling in September 2024 that allowed the government to enforce a ban on production of thin plastics, as used in disposable bags, ending a 15-year battle between the government and plastics producers over the law.
“We are making progress, but we need to strengthen enforcement and recycling,” Chirwa said. He called the Cape Maclear project a “powerful example of community action that demonstrates that locals care about protecting the lake.”
In September 2024, HEEED, together with the National Youth Council of Malawi, a public body, trained 22 youths from some lakeshore districts in diving and waste management. It is currently negotiating a partnership with Finnish environmental technology firm Clewat, which focuses on maritime pollution. The company developed a barge-like device it says can collect up to 200 cubic meters (7,062 cubic feet) of waterborne rubbish per hour.
The goal, Zacharia said, is to develop a comprehensive initiative to clean up the garbage hotspots of Lake Malawi.
Banner image: Divers collect garbage underwater at Cape Maclear in Lake Malawi National Park. Image courtesy of HEEED.
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Citation:
Mayoma, B. S., Mjumira, I. S., Efudala, A., Syberg, K., & Khan, F. R. (2019). Collection of anthropogenic litter from the shores of Lake Malawi: Characterization of plastic debris and the implications of public involvement in the African Great Lakes. Toxics, 7(4), 64. doi:10.3390/toxics7040064
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