Sisal is the greener alternative to plastic

KENYAN farmer Sam Mung’ala once struggled to feed his family by growing cowpeas and sorghum. These days he is betting on a new type of merchandise: shopping bags.

The farmer from Kibwezi town in the country’s south is planting and selling sisal, a source of fibre that roadside vendors and market traders use to make carrier bags.

“A kilo used to sell for 30 Kenyan shillings (R4), but now it can fetch up to 100 shillings ($1) since the plastic ban,” he said, crouching to sharpen a machete at his farm.

Last year Kenya passed a law aimed at reducing plastic pollution, whereby Kenyans producing, selling or even using plastic bags risk imprisonment of up to four years or fines of $40 000.

Big supermarket chains like France’s Carrefour and Kenya’s Nakumatt have already started offering customers cloth bags as alternatives – creating demand for fibre like sisal, said Robert Gituru, a botanist at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

“Farmers are taking more interest in sisal due to the growing demand for shopping bags made with plant fibre,” he said.

Sisal provides a greener alternative to plastic, “as it decomposes faster and can be recycled as farm manure,” he said.

Kenya is the world’s third-biggest producer of sisal after Brazil and Tanzania, said Dickson Kibata, technical officer at the government’s Agriculture and Food Authority, and it generates about 2 billion shillings ($20 million) in annual revenue.

“But that could rise to 50 billion shillings ($500 million) in the next five years if demand for sisal keeps growing,” he said.

The Kenyan government is encouraging farmers to invest in the crop, Kibata said, for example by hosting a conference later this year for farmers and businessmen on alternatives to plastic – such as plant fibre.

Mung’ala, who said sisal could cope with Kenya’s arid weather, used to grow only a small strip of the crop on the edge of his field.

Now he has more than 4000m2 of land sprouting with sisal plants. – Reuters

PICTURE: THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION/KAGONDU NJAGI Kibera residents collect plastic waste to help clean up the Nairobi dam in Kenya last month.