Kenya's Hits and Misses On Journey to Eliminating Plastic Waste: Kenya
"Every food market, big or small, used plastic bags to wrap raw or cooked food items for their customers. We could not imagine a life without plastic bags. There was even a time people used plastic bags as flying toilets. People around here would poo in them and throw them away for lack of toilets," Jane Wanjeri, a food vendor in Kibra, an informal settlement in Nairobi County, tells IPS.
In a groundbreaking move in 2017, the government banned single-use plastic bags. The ban includes severe penalties of fines between USD 20,000 and USD 40,000 and or one to four years in prison for noncompliance. More than six years later, the ban is one of the world's strictest and most efficient. But recent studies show Kenya has not made significant inroads in improvements of solid waste management. A recent report titled Making Policy Work for Africa's Circular Plastics Economy found that despite the ban, in Kenya,"there has not been a noticeable reduction in the overall amount of plastic waste."
Estimates show the amount of plastic that becomes waste across the country is 0.5 to 1.3 million tonnes per year, of which only eight percent is recycled. The rest is landfilled, incinerated, or released back into the environment. In this regard, KPP recently released the Design Guidelines for Recyclability in Kenya to ensure that 100 percent of plastic packaging is reusable or recyclable by 2030. The guidelines were signed and endorsed by key stakeholders such as plastic packaging manufacturers and prominent fast-moving consumer goods brands.
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