Post by Bozur on Apr 9, 2005 21:02:52 GMT -5
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NAIROBI JOURNAL
Flower of Africa: A Curse That's Blowing in the Wind
By MARC LACEY
Published: April 7, 2005
Guillame Bonn for The New York Times
Plastic bags litter parts of Nairobi,above, and other African cities, clogging streams, choking animals and piling up into little mountains of disease.
NAIROBI, Kenya, April 1 - Surrounded by all the asphalt and car fumes of this overgrown African capital, hidden among the tin-roof shacks in the sprawling slums and the forested parklands, there are some rather beautiful blooms.
In and around overpopulated Nairobi, one can spot the tiny purple and white flowers of the knotweed, or the bright yellow blooms of the blackjack weed or the elongated appendages of the devil's horsewhip. "The beauty and almost infinite variety of our wildflowers is one of the greatest pleasures for the traveler in East Africa," Teresa Sapieha wrote in her 1989 book "Wayside Flowers of East Africa."
But this is a story of a different kind of flower, which also comes in many colors but lacks the beauty of the many varieties discovered in nature by Ms. Sapieha. All over Nairobi, and all over Africa, are ugly artificial blooms that mar the landscape and that environmentalists want plucked up and removed.
These flowers are cheap, thin plastic bags that are tossed to the ground by consumers. This kind of litter has reached a critical mass in Kenya - clogging streams, choking animals and piling up into little mountains of disease.
These bags are different from the ones that Westerners carry their groceries in from the neighborhood supermarket; the Kenyan bags are so thin they barely hold a few mangoes or a few pounds of corn meal without tearing.
Their delicate nature makes reuse impossible and leads to their frequent introduction into nature, where experts say they tend to remain without breaking down for somewhere around 1,000 years. The bags are so pervasive in this part of the world that many have taken to calling them "African flowers," as if they were local varieties of roses or bougainvillea.
"You can't miss these bags," said Clive Mutunga, an environmental economist in Kenya who is seeking to clean up the mess. "It's gotten to the point where it's almost become our national flower."
Wangari Maathai, the assistant environmental minister in Kenya and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, says the sacks provide a breeding place for malarial mosquitoes, helping spread one of the continent's major killers.
"I'm not saying don't use plastics at all," Dr. Maathai said recently as she extolled the virtues of more homegrown bags, like those made of sisal or cotton, or the traditional baskets, which were what people used before plastic came along.
A recent study by the National Environmental Management Authority and the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis estimated that more than 100 million light polythene bags, many of them thinner than 30 microns, are handed out each year in Kenyan supermarkets, which is more than 4,000 tons of the bags every month. The study recommended banning the thin bags, which are believed to make up most of the litter. Other bags, it said, should be taxed to provide a financial incentive for bag manufacturers to come up with more environmentally friendly alternatives.
The tax could then go to support recycling efforts, which are not common in Africa, says the report, which was financed by the United Nations Environment Program.
The report notes that there would be some job losses if Kenya outlawed the manufacture of plastic bags, which is a booming industry here that supplies all of East Africa. But it notes that other jobs would probably be created among cotton bag manufacturers. Nairobi's street children and others might also earn some income from picking up plastics if a recycling program was started.
Kenya, which profits from the many tourists who come to witness its pristine landscape, is not the first African country to try to clean up its act. Rwanda recently banned plastic bags that are less than 100 microns thick and it took such a tough enforcement stand that the police would dump out the goods on the road if they found shoppers with them. "The black plastic bag has disappeared from Kigali," the United Nations Environment Program said, referring to the capital of Rwanda in a recent statement on the issue.
South Africa has also imposed a ban on bags thinner than 30 microns, which are so flimsy that one's finger can easily pierce them. Other more durable bags are taxed by South Africa, which gives some of the revenue to a plastic bag recycling company.
Somaliland, a breakaway state in northwestern Somalia, outlawed plastic bags as well, although passing the law has not appeared to put much of a dent in the problem there. In local parlance, the plastic bags there are called "Hargeisa flowers" because they pop up everywhere in and around Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital. "The bags have not only become an environmental problem, but also an eyesore," Abdillahi Duale, Somaliland's information minister, recently told the United Nations News Service.
Eliminating the bags is regarded primarily as a task that falls on shopkeepers. Nakumatt Holdings, one of Kenya's largest supermarkets, has said it backs the effort to clean up the country's landscape.
But the problem lies as well with the consumers throwing them into the wind. Kenya is considering an antilittering campaign not unlike its other public service campaigns - encouraging people to use condoms, pay their taxes, drive safely and seek a woman's consent before sex.
To reach the next generation of potential litterers, the United Nations Environmental Program has produced a children's book in which a little boy named Theo alerts all the grown-ups around his town to the menace of discarded plastic bags by collecting them and rolling them into a ball that soon grows bigger than he is.
NAIROBI JOURNAL
Flower of Africa: A Curse That's Blowing in the Wind
By MARC LACEY
Published: April 7, 2005
Guillame Bonn for The New York Times
Plastic bags litter parts of Nairobi,above, and other African cities, clogging streams, choking animals and piling up into little mountains of disease.
NAIROBI, Kenya, April 1 - Surrounded by all the asphalt and car fumes of this overgrown African capital, hidden among the tin-roof shacks in the sprawling slums and the forested parklands, there are some rather beautiful blooms.
In and around overpopulated Nairobi, one can spot the tiny purple and white flowers of the knotweed, or the bright yellow blooms of the blackjack weed or the elongated appendages of the devil's horsewhip. "The beauty and almost infinite variety of our wildflowers is one of the greatest pleasures for the traveler in East Africa," Teresa Sapieha wrote in her 1989 book "Wayside Flowers of East Africa."
But this is a story of a different kind of flower, which also comes in many colors but lacks the beauty of the many varieties discovered in nature by Ms. Sapieha. All over Nairobi, and all over Africa, are ugly artificial blooms that mar the landscape and that environmentalists want plucked up and removed.
These flowers are cheap, thin plastic bags that are tossed to the ground by consumers. This kind of litter has reached a critical mass in Kenya - clogging streams, choking animals and piling up into little mountains of disease.
These bags are different from the ones that Westerners carry their groceries in from the neighborhood supermarket; the Kenyan bags are so thin they barely hold a few mangoes or a few pounds of corn meal without tearing.
Their delicate nature makes reuse impossible and leads to their frequent introduction into nature, where experts say they tend to remain without breaking down for somewhere around 1,000 years. The bags are so pervasive in this part of the world that many have taken to calling them "African flowers," as if they were local varieties of roses or bougainvillea.
"You can't miss these bags," said Clive Mutunga, an environmental economist in Kenya who is seeking to clean up the mess. "It's gotten to the point where it's almost become our national flower."
Wangari Maathai, the assistant environmental minister in Kenya and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner, says the sacks provide a breeding place for malarial mosquitoes, helping spread one of the continent's major killers.
"I'm not saying don't use plastics at all," Dr. Maathai said recently as she extolled the virtues of more homegrown bags, like those made of sisal or cotton, or the traditional baskets, which were what people used before plastic came along.
A recent study by the National Environmental Management Authority and the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis estimated that more than 100 million light polythene bags, many of them thinner than 30 microns, are handed out each year in Kenyan supermarkets, which is more than 4,000 tons of the bags every month. The study recommended banning the thin bags, which are believed to make up most of the litter. Other bags, it said, should be taxed to provide a financial incentive for bag manufacturers to come up with more environmentally friendly alternatives.
The tax could then go to support recycling efforts, which are not common in Africa, says the report, which was financed by the United Nations Environment Program.
The report notes that there would be some job losses if Kenya outlawed the manufacture of plastic bags, which is a booming industry here that supplies all of East Africa. But it notes that other jobs would probably be created among cotton bag manufacturers. Nairobi's street children and others might also earn some income from picking up plastics if a recycling program was started.
Kenya, which profits from the many tourists who come to witness its pristine landscape, is not the first African country to try to clean up its act. Rwanda recently banned plastic bags that are less than 100 microns thick and it took such a tough enforcement stand that the police would dump out the goods on the road if they found shoppers with them. "The black plastic bag has disappeared from Kigali," the United Nations Environment Program said, referring to the capital of Rwanda in a recent statement on the issue.
South Africa has also imposed a ban on bags thinner than 30 microns, which are so flimsy that one's finger can easily pierce them. Other more durable bags are taxed by South Africa, which gives some of the revenue to a plastic bag recycling company.
Somaliland, a breakaway state in northwestern Somalia, outlawed plastic bags as well, although passing the law has not appeared to put much of a dent in the problem there. In local parlance, the plastic bags there are called "Hargeisa flowers" because they pop up everywhere in and around Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital. "The bags have not only become an environmental problem, but also an eyesore," Abdillahi Duale, Somaliland's information minister, recently told the United Nations News Service.
Eliminating the bags is regarded primarily as a task that falls on shopkeepers. Nakumatt Holdings, one of Kenya's largest supermarkets, has said it backs the effort to clean up the country's landscape.
But the problem lies as well with the consumers throwing them into the wind. Kenya is considering an antilittering campaign not unlike its other public service campaigns - encouraging people to use condoms, pay their taxes, drive safely and seek a woman's consent before sex.
To reach the next generation of potential litterers, the United Nations Environmental Program has produced a children's book in which a little boy named Theo alerts all the grown-ups around his town to the menace of discarded plastic bags by collecting them and rolling them into a ball that soon grows bigger than he is.