Winning Plastics War In Rwanda
GISENYI, Rwanda — They are sometimes tucked into bras, hidden in underwear or coiled tightly around a smuggler’s arms.
They’re not narcotics or even the illegally mined gold and diamonds that frequently make it across the border into Rwanda. But they are, at least in the eyes of Egide Mberabagabo, a watchful border guard, just as nefarious.
The offending contraband? Plastic bags.
“They’re as bad as drugs,” said Mr. Mberabagabo, one of several border officials whose job is to catch smugglers and dispose of illicit plastic.
In Rwanda, it is illegal to import, produce, use or sell plastic bags and packaging except within specific industries like hospitals. The nation is one of more than 40 that have banned, restricted or taxed the use of plastic bags, including China, France and Italy.
But Rwanda’s approach is different. Traffickers caught carrying illegal plastic are liable to be fined, jailed or forced to make public confessions.
Smugglers can receive up to six months in jail. The executives of companies that keep or make illegal plastic bags can be imprisoned for up to a year, officials say. Stores have been shut down and fined for wrapping bread in cellophane, their owners required to sign apology letters — all as part of an environmental cleanup.
Plastic bags, which take hundreds of years to degrade, are a major global issue, blamed for clogging oceans and killing marine life.
In September, Kenya made a rule that will punish anyone making, selling or importing plastic bags with as much as four years in jail or a $19,000 fine.
In Rwanda, the authorities say the bags contribute to flooding and prevent crops from growing because rainwater can’t penetrate the soil when it is littered with plastic.
The nation’s strict policy appears to be paying off: Streets in the capital, Kigali, and elsewhere across this hilly, densely populated country are virtually spotless. Citizens, including the president, are required monthly to partake in a neighborhood cleanup.
Plastic- bag vigilantes are everywhere, and these informants tip off the authorities about sales or use of plastic.
One recent afternoon, Mr. Mberabagabo surveyed the crossing point with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where thousands of people flowed back and forth.
Plastic tubs filled with fruits and vegetables bobbed above the heads of women who marched purposeful- ly. And among them, often tucked in the women’s undergarments, Mr. Mberabagabo said, were hundreds of plastic bags.
“The most extreme cases are the ladies,” he said. “It’s not very easy to search them.”
Rwanda is probably Africa’s cleanest nation. Though at least 15 African countries have enacted some sort of ban, many still have plastic bags littered on roads, stuck in drain pipes or caught in trees.
In Rwanda, enforcing the ban, which was first adopted in 2008, involves hundreds of rules that are tricky to follow.
Biodegradable bags are allowed only for frozen meat and fish, the government says.
Two officials from Rwanda’s Environment Management Authority recently went on an inspection of shops in Kigali. By the end of the hour, they had already padlocked three stores and fined the owners a few hundred dollars each for their plastic use.
“This is very bad,” said Martine Uwera, an inspector, towering over a store employee and poking a loaf of bread wrapped in plastic.
“Forgive us,” the worker pleaded. “We didn’t know, we didn’t know.”
The store was closed until the fine was paid and the owner signed an apology letter.
Another store in the vicinity was fined and lost revenue worth $650. Its owner, Emile Ndoli, a baker, tried to negotiate with the inspectors. Bread wrapped in paper, he said, went bad faster than bread wrapped in plastic.
“What Rwanda is doing is 100 percent correct,” he said. “But I’m also a businessman and I want a permanent solution, which won’t involve losing money.”