There’s an opportunity in plastics ban

What you need to know:

  • The Kenya Association of Manufacturers argues that more than 60,000 direct jobs and more than 400,000 indirect jobs will be lost, but there are alternatives to plastics. 
  • The extent of plastic use in Kenya or Africa has never been quantified.
  • These are fortunes coming to Kenya indirectly considering the fact that China is ceding low-end jobs to other emerging economies like Kenya

Kenya finally made the decision to ban plastic bags. 

Research at the macro-level links their use to climate change, ocean toxicity, poor air quality and ecosystem disruption, among other adverse consequences.

They litter big and small cities alike, like scattered roses of different colours. When it rains, they either clog our drains or are washed into lakes and oceans to feed our fish with toxins, killing marine life.

Although it may not please manufacturers of fossil fuel plastics, there are opportunities outside the plastic bag menace. The Kenya Association of Manufacturers argues that more than 60,000 direct jobs and more than 400,000 indirect jobs will be lost, but there are alternatives to plastics. It's a great chance to exploit emerging entrepreneurial opportunities.

Sources of entrepreneurship opportunity emanate from several forces. These can be technological, such as the impact of mobile telephony, sociocultural (the ‘healthy living’ trend with gyms being built as new enterprises), demographic (the youth bulge), economic (when the economy grows or declines) and political or legal (devolution in Kenya that has created new opportunities at the county level).

If the ban is enforced, it will certainly create new entrepreneurial opportunities. In this article, I focus on political and legal force that facilitated the ban on plastics.

It is my considered opinion that the ban will precipitate a season of innovations, some of which could help deal with some other menaces within our environment. 

For example, water hyacinth, which is a pain in Lake Victoria and other freshwater lakes, can be used to make shopping baskets and paper bags, in the process creating thousands of jobs.

Before the August deadline for plastic bags, information must get to the ground for people to start making these items manually and incrementally improve to mechanise production that can meet demand.

GUNNY BAGS

This will also be a great opportunity to revive the cotton industry. While farmers may not see the opportunity, leaders from those areas must push the government to direct resources and encourage farmers to restart cotton growing. 

Most important is to provide disease-resistant seeds and extension services to improve yields and support the entire textile industry ecosystem.

If that were to happen, it would lead to indirect benefits like the reopening of many ginneries that were shut down due to lack of cotton, as well as the Kicomi and Rivatex factories, to create a vibrant textile industry that would likely create more jobs than any other industry currently operating.

These are fortunes coming to Kenya indirectly, considering that China is ceding low-end jobs to other emerging economies like Kenya. Our role is to wake up and take advantage of policy changes.

Sisal plantations that once dominated some parts of the ASAL regions could be revived to make environmentally friendly products and help consign plastics to oblivion. 

Until recently, coffee, tea, sugar and pyrethrum were transported in gunny bags made of sisal. Today most gunny bags are imported, yet at one point Kenya was a major exporter of the product.

The packaging of milk products needs to revert to old ways of using glass bottles. The business model too can change and have milk dispensed into reusable bottles. 

This too applies to many plastics used for bottled water. Just like with beer and soft drink manufacturers, bottled water manufacturers and milk processors should do the same and create a new supply chain to enable current glass bottle manufacturers to scale up and serve more people.

Glass bottles should be extended in place of plastic ones to cover all pharmaceuticals and chemical manufacturers, including oils and soaps. 

If glass isn’t cost-effective, there is renewable biodegradable paper made from waste material like sugarcane. Both milk and water can be packaged in efficient, renewable, recyclable alternatives to plastic that significantly reduce the carbon footprint.

These alternatives can be made out of sugarcane. Knowing that Kenya’s sugarcane production has never been competitive, introducing innovative products such“Just Water” and “boxed water”, used in America, would enhance the competitiveness and improve the livelihood of farmers.

The extent of plastic use in Kenya or Africa has never been quantified. Statistics that aggregate global data show the production volume of plastic rose from 1.5 million tons in 1950 to 322 million metric tons, or about 5 trillion units, in 2015.  

Less than 1 per cent of total production is recycled. Studies show that 1 ton of recycled plastics saves energy equivalent to 16 barrels of oil

PAPER DOES BIODEGRADE

It is emerging economies that contribute the most production. Some of these studies that I have quoted here are not without challenge, and there is much research that has come up with contradictory findings. 

An October 2016 story by Ben Adler in Wired magazine, "Banning Plastic Bags Is Great for the World. Right? Not So Fast", argues:

Still, many environmentalists argue that plastic is worse than paper. Climate change, they say, isn’t the only form of environmental degradation to worry about. “Paper does have its own environmental consequences in terms of how much energy it takes to generate,” acknowledges Emily Norton, director of the Massachusetts Sierra Club. “The big difference is that paper does biodegrade eventually. Plastic is a toxin that stays in the environment, marine animals ingest it, and it enters their bodies and then ours.”

Even with contradictory findings, it is overwhelmingly clear that there is reason to pay attention to adverse changes caused by pollution. When scientists differ, policymaking becomes blurred, as the decision made by the US president to pull out of the Paris accord shows.

Parliamentarians have been pushing for the status quo with respect to plastics, presenting similar arguments. 

SOLUTIONFOR WATER HYACINTH

A policy change towards the ban of plastics will be good for the country as more employment will be created. There will likely be positive unintended benefits like the revival of the textile industry and the emergence of new innovations to increase the utility of existing crops such as sugar.

Arid and semi-arid areas may begin to experience greater investments in raw materials to feed into the new demand and we may find a cure for water hyacinth in Lake Victoria.

We must equip rural farmers with information to successfully produce what is imported unnecessarily.

Bolivian politician Evo Morales once said, “Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.”  

The writer is an associate professor at University of Nairobi’s School of Business. Twitter: @bantigito