Africa: A new report has found that plastic waste is “spiralling out of control” across the African continent. According to the charity Tearfund, at current levels, enough plastic waste to cover a football pitch is openly dumped or burned in sub-Saharan Africa every minute.
The Tearfund report is based on statistics from a database of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and is published in Global Policies Outlook.
If the situation continues, the region will end up with 116 metric tonnes of plastic waste annually by 2060, six times more than the 18 metric tonnes of waste produced in 2019.
The major driver of rising plastic consumption in sub-Saharan Africa, where 70 percent of the population is under 30, is demand for vehicles and other products amid rising income as well as population growth.
Mr. Rich Gower, senior economist at Tearfund, commented that “the signs of environmental breakdown are all around us, but this treaty has the potential to curb the plastics crisis and improve the lives of billions of people.
“Much of the plastic being used in sub-Saharan Africa is plastic packaging and ends up being dumped and burned,” Mr. Gower added. The senior economist urged negotiators in Nairobi to agree to significant reductions in plastic production and to put waste pickers, who dispose of 60 percent of global plastic waste, front and centre of the treaty.
Dr. Tiwonge Mzumara-Gawa, from Malawi, a waste campaigner who will be at the negotiations in Kenya, remarked that “while these negotiations continue, the health of people in Malawi and across Africa is being impacted by plastic pollution every day.”
“In Malawi, we see the burning and dumping of plastic waste every day, harming people’s health. These negotiations have shown that change is coming, but it will not come easily. There are some who profit from this plastic crisis and want to keep ambition as low as possible,” the campaigner added.
MOST READ | Amazon unveils humanoid robot to revolutionize warehouses
