4 years in prison for using a plastic bag
Kenya introduces world’s toughest anti-litter law
MAKING, selling or even using plastic bags in Kenya is to be punished by up to four years in jail or fines of £31,000.
The penalties – the world’s toughest against plastic pollution – came into effect yesterday.
Thin plastic shopping bags litter the streets of the capital Nairobi and form towering piles at rubbish tips.
The country’s government said the bags harm the environment, block sewers and do not decompose. Some 100million plastic bags are handed out every year in Kenya by supermarkets alone, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
The bags have long been identified as a major cause of environmental damage and health problems, killing birds, fish and other animals that mistake them for food, said the UNEP.
Plastic also enters the human food chain through fish and other animals. In Nairobi’s slaughterhouses, some cows destined for human consumption had 20 bags removed from their stomachs.
Vet Mbuthi Kinyanjui said: ‘This is something we didn’t get ten years ago but now it’s almost on a daily basis.’
The bags damage agricultural land, pollute tourist sites and provide breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carry malaria and dengue fever.
Eight million tons of plastic are carried into the ocean every year. Many bags drift into the sea, strangling turtles, suffocating seabirds and filling the stomachs of dolphins and whales with waste until they die of starvation.
Habib El Habr, an expert on marine litter working with the UNEP in Kenya, said if current rates continue there will be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050. He added that it takes 500 to 1,000 years for a plastic bag to break down.
Strict bans have been implemented in other African countries including Cameroon, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Mauritania and Malawi.
Kenya’s law technically allows police to go after anyone carrying a plastic bag. But Judy Wakhungu, the country’s environment minister, said enforcement would initially focus on manufacturers and suppliers.
It took Kenya three attempts over ten years to pass the ban.
Samuel Matonda, of the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, said it would cost 60,000 jobs and force 176 firms to close. Kenya is a major exporter of plastic bags to the region.
Big supermarkets in the country, such as Nakumatt and Carrefour, have already started offering customers cloth bags.
The Daily Mail launched its Banish The Bags campaign in 2008 for a 5p charge on singleuse plastic shopping bags in the UK. Since it came into law in October 2015 the number of bags taken home by shoppers has fallen by 83 per cent.