UN and Environmentalists Call for New Strategies to Tackle Plastic Pollution

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): With the increasing challenges of climate change and other crises caused by poor waste management, environmentalists and the United Nations are now calling on authorities to adapt to measures that would bring solutions to the menace.

Plastic waste, however, is one of the most significant contributors to surface and wetland pollution, affecting both human and aquatic life. The global production and use of plastic materials is on a resounding streak, thus hampering the regulatory intentions.

According to the National Environment Management Authority's (Nema) national solid waste management strategy report, Nairobi generates about 2,400 tonnes of solid waste per day, 20 per cent of which is plastic waste.

The United Nations environmental programme also sees these challenges as damning concerns that would require serious interventions if the global goal of having a waste-free environment is to be achieved.

While responding to journalists in Nairobi, UNEP's Kenya Coordinator, Dr Cyrille Siewe, confirmed that there are indeed talks to ban plastics in Kenya with a series of intergovernmental talks already taking shape.

"We are currently trying to appeal to the public to adopt our strategies of REUSE, RECYCLE and REFUSE as a way of controlling the incessant supply, he said.

 At least 5,000 premature deaths were recorded in Kenya in 2019 due to air pollution, with another study showing that over 19 million people suffer from respiratory problems as a result of burning synthetic materials.

Stakeholders are now calling on the public and authorities to embrace the principle of singularity, which turns the end life of a product into a raw material for production.

 This, coupled with strategies to reduce plastic waste from the environment, would be of great help to both human and aquatic life. "Waste management has an element of correlation with climate change, pollution and natural crises and therefore needs to be treated with great concern," Dr Siewe added.

In 2017, the Kenyan government issued a ban on polythene bags in an attempt to strategically deface all plastic use. However, this is still only 80 per cent successful, with another regulation on the way.

 According to the Director of Environmental Enforcement at Nema, Dr Ayub Macharia, the government is taking serious steps to reduce the rate of plastic pollution, even though previous attempts have not yielded real results.

Courtesy: www.nation.africa.com