Businesses hoping for some middle ground on Kenya plastic bag ban
Businesses are reeling after Kenya became the latest country to completely ban plastic bags, with importers, makers and users under threat of heavy penalties.
Importers and makers who continue to produce plastic bags face fines of up to 4 million Kenyan shillings (Dh142,779) or a four-year jail term.
Environmental lobby groups, including Greenpeace and UN Environment, praised the move, calling it “a beacon of hope”.
The anti-plastic drive became law on February 28 but allowed a six-month window for compliance – which closed at the end of last month. Kenya joins Cameroon, Eritrea, Mauritania, Morocco, Tanzania and Bangladesh in completely banning the bags.
Other nations in Africa and Asia have, in the past decade, imposed bans on plastic of a certain thickness, but the laws are not always enforced.
Uganda banned the sale of lightweight plastic bags in 2007 and taxed thicker plastic bags at a rate of 120 per cent, but the measure has had little effect. Other countries now have a thriving black market for plastic bags.
But no country has introduced a law as tough as those in Kenya.
“Pollution from throwaway plastic is an ecological and public health disaster, and we welcome the leadership that Kenya is taking on this,” said Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment in Nairobi.
“UN Environment has worked with the Kenyan government and the plastics industry to transition from plastic bag use and brought in experts from Uganda and Rwanda to share lessons on how others have implemented this change.”
Kenya’s environment management authority has set up collection centres in all major shopping areas around the country for people to dispose of the bags.
The authority’s David Ongare said the push to ban plastic bags began in 2007.
“We have been holding meetings with the key stakeholders, including manufacturers, importers and retail shops,” Mr Ongare said.
But the manufacturing industry called for “a middle ground” to stave off economic slowdown.
“The manufacturers want a way forward. We want clarity on the implementation of the ban,” said Phyllis Wakiaga, chief executive of Kenya’s association of manufacturers. “Can we have a middle ground? We want clean environment and economic growth to go hand in hand.”
UN Environment said more than eight million tonnes of plastic end up in oceans every year, where they become a health hazard and public nuisance, and harm marine life, fisheries and tourism. They take between 50 and 1,000 years to degrade, said Greenpeace Africa’s executive director, Njeri Kabeberi, who advocates a return to traditional handwoven “kiondo” baskets.
Habib El Habr, an environmental activist, said plastic pollution was “one of the most pressing environmental issues of our time, harming wildlife through entanglement or ingestion, affecting air quality through burning and contributing to floods by clogging up drains”.
In recent years, huge numbers of plastic bags have been found in the stomachs of livestock being processed in Nairobi’s abattoirs. Cattle swallow the bags and when it clogs up their innards, they die from malnutrition.
“If this ban works it will be a massive breakthrough for reducing plastic pollution which is causing huge damage to the planet,” Mr El Habr said.
“We hope other countries will also step up and take decisive action.”