The Best Stand award was presented to Geo Pomona Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman Dr Dilesh Nguwaya by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
By Dickson Bandera
Geo Pomona Waste Management received top recognition for its environmental conservation efforts at the just ended 2026 Zimbabwe Agricultural Show, winning the Best Stand award in the Environmental Conservation and Land Use category.
The award comes as Zimbabwe seeks to address persistent challenges around solid waste, littering, illegal dumping and sanitation in its rapidly growing urban centres.
Harare, the country’s capital, has in recent years faced serious waste-management problems, with irregular refuse collection and the accumulation of garbage in public spaces turning some areas into illegal dumpsites and raising concerns about environmental pollution and public health.
The crisis has also prompted a broader national response. In December 2018, President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared the first Friday of every month a National Clean-Up Day, making environmental cleanliness a regular national campaign rather than an occasional municipal exercise. The initiative calls on citizens, businesses, institutions and communities to take responsibility for the condition of their surroundings.
The campaign has since become part of Zimbabwe’s wider effort to promote a culture of environmental responsibility. Its underlying message is that waste management cannot depend solely on councils and waste-collection companies; residents and businesses also have a role in preventing littering, separating and properly disposing of waste, and keeping public spaces clean.
But the challenge goes beyond simply picking up garbage.
For cities such as Harare, effective waste management requires a functioning chain — from waste generation and household collection to transportation, treatment, recycling, recovery and environmentally responsible disposal.
This has increasingly brought private-sector operators into the conversation about how African cities can improve urban sanitation while developing more sustainable approaches to waste.
Against this background, Geo Pomona has emerged as one of the companies involved in efforts to strengthen waste collection and management in Harare.
The company’s activities have included waste collection, the clearing of illegal dumping sites and community clean-up initiatives, while its Pomona operations are also linked to efforts to develop waste-to-energy and resource-recovery solutions.
The approach reflects a broader shift in the way waste is viewed internationally — not simply as material to be removed from streets and taken to a dumpsite, but as a resource that can potentially be recovered, recycled, reused or converted into energy.
Zimbabwe’s national environmental policy increasingly recognises this connection between waste management, sustainable cities and the circular economy. The country’s 2026 national reporting on environmental progress, for example, identifies recycling, waste reduction, the Pomona waste-to-energy project and the National Clean-Up Campaign as measures contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals on sustainable consumption and production, sustainable cities, water and sanitation, and protection of terrestrial ecosystems.
The importance of collection and public behaviour has also become evident in Harare’s recent sanitation interventions.
In February 2026, the Environmental Management Agency, Geo Pomona Waste Management and the City of Harare launched a coordinated operation targeting littering and illegal dumping in the capital. The initiative combined awareness, waste management and enforcement, reflecting concerns that improving collection alone cannot solve the problem if residents and businesses continue to dispose of waste improperly.
The authorities’ approach has therefore increasingly combined service delivery with enforcement and public education — an attempt to restore order and sanitation in public spaces while encouraging longer-term changes in behaviour.
This is significant because poor waste management is not only an environmental issue. Uncollected waste can block drainage systems, contaminate water and soil, create breeding grounds for disease vectors and contribute to unhealthy living conditions. For growing cities, reliable waste services are therefore closely linked to public health, urban planning and the overall quality of life.
At the Zimbabwe Agricultural Show, Geo Pomona used its exhibition platform to showcase its operations and engage visitors on responsible waste management, environmental conservation and the importance of keeping communities clean.
The company’s recognition came through the Best Stand award, which was presented to Geo Pomona Chief Executive Officer and Executive Chairman Dr Dilesh Nguwaya by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The award places a private-sector waste-management company within a much larger national conversation about how Zimbabwe can build cleaner and more sustainable cities.
It also illustrates an increasingly important principle in urban environmental management: clean cities require more than clean-up campaigns. They require reliable collection systems, appropriate infrastructure, responsible disposal, recycling and recovery, effective regulation, public participation and sustained behavioural change.
For Zimbabwe, the Presidential Clean-Up Campaign has helped put cleanliness and environmental responsibility into the national spotlight. The emerging challenge is to translate that culture of periodic clean-up into permanent systems in which waste is collected on schedule, illegal dumping is discouraged, materials are recovered where possible and communities remain responsible for the environments in which they live.
Geo Pomona’s recognition at one of Zimbabwe’s largest annual exhibitions therefore comes at a time when waste management is evolving from a municipal sanitation concern into a broader environmental, public-health and sustainable-development issue.
The company says the award reaffirms its commitment to supporting efforts to build a cleaner, healthier and more sustainable Zimbabwe.
