Intensify fight against plastic pollution

While on a trip to Canada recently, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed that the ban on plastic products be extended to Kenya’s protected areas. The Ban has since been gazetted by the Tourism and Wildlife Secretary and is to take effect from June 2020. It prohibits the use of plastic bottles, straws and related products in Kenya’s national parks and all other protected areas.

The directive, coming close to two years since the ban on plastic carrier bags took effect is a demonstration of the country’s commitment to deal with the challenges of single use plastics.

At the Fourth session of the UN Environment Assembly meeting in March this year, a declaration was adopted on single plastics. The declaration recognized the global magnitude of the challenge, noting that of the average nine billion tonnes of plastics that the world has produces only 9percent of it has been recycled. The rest is therefore still available in different parts of the environment, since plastics are not biodegradable.

The world is taking concerted action to deal with the challenge of plastic pollution, be it in the oceans or single use plastics generally. At the global level, in addition to the resolutions by UNEA there have been several studies documenting the magnitude of pollution from plastics, the actions taken by different states across the world and the need for concerted international response to the challenge.

As part of those continuing efforts, state parties to the Basel convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal in May this year adopted an amendment to include plastics as part of the wastes covered by the Convention and provide for regulation of its trade.

International efforts must be complemented by national action. This is why Kenya’s continued strides is worth celebrating. A study undertaken by the World Resources Institute in collaboration with UN Environment in 2018 on Legal Limits of Single Use Plastics and Micro-Plastics: A Global Review of National Laws and Regulations revealed that there were 127 countries with that had adopted, as at July 2018, some form of legislation on single use plastics. Kenya is amongst these countries. At an international experts’ meeting last week on developing a Legislative Guide on Single Use Plastics we had interesting experiences to share on what countries across the world are doing and the lessons emerging from it.

Many countries including Kenya have adopted bans of some aspect or the other or single use plastics. As our experience as a country demonstrates, this decision has spurred national consciousness on this environmental challenge. Its success this far has been due to political leadership much more than even the comprehensiveness of the legal provisions. As a colleague pointed out to me during the experts’ discussion our Gazette Notice may not even qualify to be a law, since it is only a few short paragraphs. My response was that regardless of its size, it has succeeded in spurring the country onto the road of dealing with a national and global menace That’s a greater measure of success than the content.

Having said so, it is important to recognise that the bans in place currently are just but the first step. They require Much more is required to enable the country comprehensively to deal with plastic pollution. As part of those efforts, the end game must be to change the entire plastic economy and not just to deal with plastics from a waste management perspective. Global discussions on circular economy and its adoption in management of plastics are imperative. The European Union has already led with some efforts in this direction. Kenya could learn from them.

Even as we seek to learn, we will recognise that there are several options, including bans, taxes, extended producer responsibility, use of other economic instruments, public-private partnerships, amongst others. We must debate this menu of options and take the ones that will move us in the long-term to a more comprehensive solution, since there is no one-size fits all solution.