The packaging materials giant Dow has expanded its collaboration with Mr. Green Africa, a recycling organisation, to work on Kenya’s plastic waste challenge.
The collaboration was officially launched in November 2019 during the Dow Project Butterfly event in Nairobi, Kenya, to raise awareness of the problem of plastic waste, influence constructive action and invest in waste management and recycling solutions.
To date, the partnership has allowed Dow and Mr. Green Africa to bring about meaningful change in the communities in Kenya, where a lack of waste infrastructure has led to plastic waste ending up in rivers and informal dumps, as well as the development of a demand for flexible plastic packaging that has created an additional source of income for workers in the informal waste sector.
Part of the project included incentivizing waste pickers with higher, stable profits and creating sorting centres that would allow waste pickers to get paid for the collected plastic waste and then allow the waste to be recycled in recycling centres.
Dow says that the collaboration has created a new market for flexible plastic waste and has also made sorting materials more reliable in the area.
It is estimated that 30 metric tonnes (MT) of flexible plastic waste are now being handled through the Dow and Green Africa waste streams every two months in Kenya.
Dow and Mr Green Africa will aim for a brand ownership collaboration to close the loop in the second step of the partnership by allowing a new packaging application by using recyclable flexible packaging and the unrecyclable portions in creative end uses.
tIn addition, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the project veered towards the use of technology to allow residential collection through a brand-new app created by Dow’s technical team and deployed locally by Mr. Green Africa.
Sustainability and Advocacy Manager for Packaging and Specialty Plastics of Dow’s Africa, Adwoa Coleman, said: “We are happy to have expanded this relationship and look forward to our future partnerships in Kenya and beyond. By helping to ensure that we move towards a circular economy for plastics, we will move towards a world in which the practical and social benefits of plastic are balanced by its environmental efficiency.”
Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Mr. Green Africa, Kieran Smith, added: “Ensuring a circular plastics economy requires the entire waste recovery value chain to work together, and we are pleased to have continued support from Dow to ensure that we can continue working towards a shared vision for Kenya and the wider continent to address the issue of plastic waste.”
By 2025, Dow aims at recycling at least 5 000 metric tonnes, integrating flexible packaging in the recyclable waste stream and recycling precious plastic waste back into new applications across sub-saharan Africa.
