Mazingira Day Celebrations In Kenya’s Cleanest City

Mazingira Day, a public holiday previously called Moi Day and later Utamaduni Day had its debut celebrations on 10th October, 2024 in various counties. This first Holiday of the month of October, had been in the process of rebranding and has recently had changes being effected after His Excellency the President William Ruto assented to the Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill.

"The Bill amends the Public Holidays act (Cap. 110) to Substitute Utamaduni Day with Mazingira Day holiday to be observed on 10th October, Annually, " a brief on the bill reads. The change is reportedly aimed at complementing government efforts towards environmental conservation action.

In Nakuru city, pre-event activities like Tree planting of over 5000 trees at Kimathi Primary alongside three other local schools were flagged off in buildup of the main event with Nakuru City Environment Cabinet and county officials taking part. Clean up activities at Shaabab-Koinange were full of young and energetic faces as youth turned up to take part and on this day 9th October, 2024, the setting up of environmentally conservative exhibitions marked the end of Wednesday’s activities.

The 10th October celebrations began with a procession of Kenya Prison Band accompanied County officials, Nakuru County Rover Scouts, and Environmental and Climate Activists holding up a Mazingira banner and chanting “Mazingira Yetu?” to which passive crowds responded, “ Jukumu Yetu”. The locals were then led to the venue Nyayo Gardens early morning where the event was launched and exhibits opened for visits.

The Exhibits including an engineering contraption called a combustion optimizer which is designed to reduce emissions from fuels up to 30% while also increasing fuel efficiency from a range of 8-30% depending on the optimizer used whether on a truck fuel system, a high consumption petrol engine, or even a motorcycle. More exhibits included construction slabs and tiles made from recycled glass bottles and other projects that aimed at contributing to the eco system while helping mitigate environmental pollution.

The event later hosted mediated Panel discussions with various environment and climate experts and officials. Several questions that were touched on being mitigating pollution from energy sources, policies in place and process of policy making, as well as youth inclusion in the policy making and incubation processes of Environmental Action plans. Emphasis still lies on the need to accelerate forest restoration and ensuring that 15 billion trees are planted by 2030.

The importance of mobilizing citizens and the government to work together in addressing critical environmental issues such as pollution, climate change and disaster, biodiversity loss cannot be more out in the open.