Plastic Pollution in our Villages / Rural Communities

For a long time, plastic pollution has been a problem for urban areas where it is causing serious trouble. Our work only within Kampala, Wakiso and Entebbe has exposed the extent of reach by plastic waste in areas including slum areas / ghettos, drainage channels, wetlands and lakeshores.

Globally cities are known for generating enormous amounts of plastic waste due to the fact they are manufacturing zones with high population triggering high levels of consumption. Only in Kampala city, 600 tons of waste is generated on a daily 60% of this is plastic waste. It unfortunate that the city capacity can only manage to collect a little of it, much of the waste is left uncollected and it is ending in the environment. Our work last year uncovered how plastics are chocking drainage channels (Nakivubo)and wetlands (Nababirye) in Kampala City.

Read the Uganda 2020 Plastic Polluters Report: https://endplasticpollutionow.blogspot.com/p/report-ugandas-leading-plastic-polluters.html

The world believed that plastics is an urban issue for the modernized. The entire decade has been full of agreements, promises and pledges from companies producing plastic to run plastic waste free business models and adapt their products to sustainability programs. Warnings have passed about how increasing production of plastics will drive waste management out of control more so for poor countries that cannot handle it. As we celebrate a decade of plummeting fossil fuel prices to the benefit of our climate system, the “bad guys” are changing the focus to production of more plastics. It should be noted that almost all plastics are made fossil fuels and it is finding more uses and getting cheaper.

 My grandmother goat house for the kids. 

Plastic Pollution in our Villages / Rural communities.

I spent my December holiday at my grandparents’ home in Kiboga District, Sirimula Village, hoping to have a cool wild time out in nature but that did not happen. The moment we set off to ride our motorcycle on the dusty roads a few kilometers into the hills of Kiwaguzi in Mulagi Sub county I started to notice development of small roadside trading centers. I was happy for this that my people can now get access to basic use materials in their day to day lives.

However all along the way on the dusty were disposed used plastic bottles and other materials.  The amounts of plastic waste I found being disposed kept on increasing from small village town to another until I reached my own village. I can tell that than no one in my village understands the dangers of plastics neither do they know of proper disposal or waste management. I can see kids are happy to use it as toy making material, they cannot tell that they will grow and live the plastic on earth. To my surprise, a young boy carrying a used plastic bottle and was heading to the water well to use as a funnel while fetching water at the stream. It is amazing to see these little ones play with plastics  and find small uses for it but I feel it is unfortunate that they do not know how far it will cost them and how far it is degrading the soils they hope to survive on as farmers.

I sampled a few plastic bottles littered a long side the road in 2 villages of Kasubi and Kawawa, I found out that mostly they are cheap bottled drinks and plastic packaged basic goods affordable by everyone. These include bottled water, sodas and other soft drinks and alcohol beverages that are mostly produced by local companies that have replaced the traditional local brews. And basic use products like cooking oil packaged in plastic jerry cans and bags are commonly found here. As usual the detail shows a mixture of multinationals with Coca-colas small Fanta soda bottles and Pepsi’s Mirinda leading the race to pollute our villages with plastics.

Another important factor to note is the booming production of cheap bottled water bottles of 500/= (Ugandan Shillings) these products being “cheap”, supply has managed to penetrate remote areas. Companies Like Yaket and Ice Water are the leading producers of this product category. With the boom in the Agro-processing industry has come with an increase to Uganda’s plastic problem as companies like Kazire Health Products and local processors are using plastic packaging. African based multinational like Mukwano Industries have a plastic pollution footprint visible almost in every home in East and Central Africa, the same case is happening within my village. Bidco and Mukwano are producers of basic goods with a brand family extending to over 50 different products each. Local brewers like Ambiance Waragi and many other local Distillers are generating huge amounts of plastics inform of “cheap waragi / beer”. These products are hugely consumed by both the urban and rural poor, supply reaches every small shop / local depot frequently.

 The problem;

The rising plastics pollution problem in our village / rural communities should be a sign and warning to the whole world, we are in a plastic pollution crisis and we need with ultimate urgency. It is time for companies to consider taking serious corporate action and responsibility towards the plastics they generate.  Government has to  scale down waste management to cover this greater extent of reach by plastic waste. I was informed by locals that leaders do not consider this to be a problem and because we are still a small village town that can have waste management as challenge. They say they don’t’ see plastic waste as problem in their area because since at village level waste management is not recognized, there is no local government support or recognition as an issue to address.

I asked about a public / community dumping site for the waste generated within the village, my grandmother told me that everybody finds how to manage their waste. Because of this plastics are finding way into the farmlands. To my surprise she can tell that the material is very dangerous and shouldn’t reach the gardens.

Images children playing with plastics in Kasubi parish, Sirimula Village. 

It now be concluded that plastic pollution in our rural communities is a threat to our agriculture. This extent of reach by plastic waste should form now be highlighted a major danger to our food security and entire sector productivity. This problem must be addressed  as we draw environment management plans at district level and I challenge NEMA and district environment officers to monitor this problem so as to get informed about it. We need our fertile soils and avoid intoxication from plastics and it is time for companies to consider plastic pollution in our villages / rural communities as  part the environmental harm they are causing.  As the End Plastic Pollution initiative we’ll continue to follow up on this phenomenon, we’ll visit more villages to find out how the state of plastic pollution we’ll always carry out informed campaigns to raise more attention towards this crisis.

A message to companies generating plastics;

In Uganda, businesses have successfully managed to scale down the cost / prices of their products for affordability reasons, they have managed to have effective sales, marketing and distribution systems that are penetrate to serve even in the remote areas of our country.

As we advise local governments to wake up and push for recognition of plastic waste as a problem in local communities paving way for allocation of community dumping sites or establishing community managed waste collection points.

Companies need to consider taking greater action and responsibility to take towards the plastic pollution crisis they are generating. Time for companies to power up their sustainability initiatives to promote more reuse, repurposing and effective recycling initiatives.  If a company’s sales, marketing and distribution strategy has managed to reach the most remote places then the same system can be rolled out for effective recovery of every unit of plastic required. Coca-Cola is producing 24,000 plastic bottles per hour that is 576,000 bottles per day and 4 million plastic bottles produced per week only in Uganda. One can imagine what kind of recycling program in a country like mine can cope up such levels of production just from one company. Ghana recently signed a National Plastics Action Partnership with Coca-Cola as part of strengthening ground for furthering the company’s Global Plastics Partnerships, however the numbers in Ghana about the increasing plastic pollution do not tally with the efforts seem to be taken. Among other discussions happening about plastics in Africa is the move by US through its chemistry council to weaken the Kenyan plastic ban. In Uganda the government is laying strategy to enable access to Ugandan oil for the making of plastics that are destined to flood the East and Central region. Production is already underway and oil companies like Shell, Tullow Oil and China’s CN\OOC will soon be approaching customer including Coca Cola, Pepsi, Unilever. This is also set to boot production of plastic packaging for companies like Luuka Plastics, Nice House of Plastics and Mukwano Industries. Production of plastics is now set to be the next business and the entire plastics industry globally evidently pushing the same interest.  Therefore Companies must stay true to their word and put in place supporting ,mechanisms to get consumers to adhere with the changes.

Companies should not trash our villages, instead they should work towards achieving their promise of world without waste, villages are part of that world.

By: Nirere Sadrach | On a visit to his home village in Kiboga District.

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