A Waste Of Time

Plastic rarely gets recycled, ending up in landfills and our seas. From waste-reclaimers to waste-preneurs laboriously upcycling all kinds of material, will the circular economy become mainstream before we choke up our oceans and the planet with immutable rubbish?

- By Lillian Roberts

Did you know that there are five Debris islands – just waste – in our seas worldwide?

For example, there is an entire floating island of trash, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, somewhere in the North Pacific Ocean, now greater in size than South Africa, at 1.6 million square kilometers.

And how not?

Only 9% of polymer ever gets recycled, the UN Environment Program reports, so this is not surprising. After disposal, plastic gets exposed to water, sunlight, wind, and various elements causing it to degrade into smaller particles, or ‘microplastics’, a word thought to be used first in Africa by Ryan & Moloney in their research on South African beaches in 1990.

So how is Africa doing in this regard?

Greenpeace says out of 54 African countries, 34 have either passed a law outlawing plastics with implementation, or passed a law with the intention of implementation. Of those, 16 have totally banned carrier bags or have done so partly, without yet introducing regulations to enforce the restrictions.

The East African state Eritrea was the first to embrace an outright sanction on plastic bags in 2005. The outstanding achievers though are Kenya and Rwanda. Importing, manufacturing or selling single-use plastic bags could earn companies a fine of $40,000, while using one could see individuals fined a whopping $500 in Kenya. In Rwanda, a national ban in 2008 on non-biodegradable plastic bags was instituted, prohibiting the making, use, import and sale of bags.