Kenya was hailed for its decision to outlaw single use plastic bags in 2016, with remarkably hefty penalties. So why are the bags back in stores, piling up in dumps — and being ingested by livestock?
Trash collectors from Marsabit Safi Services offload waste at the Dadach Boshe dump. Even though Kenyan banned single-use plastic bags in 2016, they're still piling up at the dump and blowing off to litter the landscape and bodies of water.Trash collectors from Marsabit Safi Services offload waste at the Dadach Boshe dump. Even though Kenyan banned single-use plastic bags in 2016, they're still piling up at the dump and blowing off to litter the landscape and bodies of water.
At first, the ban worked well. People were afraid of getting caught. And those who were caught did pay a price. In 2018, for instance, 18 vendors and other businesspeople who pleaded guilty in court in the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa were either fined $300 or sentenced to eight months in jail for using single-use plastic bags.
"The plastic bags originate from the neighboring country of Ethiopia and other countries that have not embraced the ban on plastic use," says Naphtali Osoro, the county director at the National Environment Management Authority in Marsabit. At the border of Kenya and Ethiopia, he says, traders smuggle single-use plastic bags into Kenya — sometimes concealing them within shipments of plastic that is used for packaging products and is exempt from the ban.
Some shoppers now hide their plastic bags in shopping bags made of acceptable materials like cloth, says Steve Itela, CEO of Conservation Alliance in Kenya. And others feel there are just so many people now using the bags that enforcing the ban in markets is impossible. "Goats and cattle have four [compartments in their] stomachs, the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum, but donkeys have one like humans, which makes it easier for them to defecate the ingested bags. In goats and cows, the bags remain in the stomach lining making it difficult for fodder or pasture to move through the four stomachs [compartments]. These plastic bags then cause blockage and eventually death," he says.
Some area residents have similar stories of losing goats to plastic bag consumption, although no one is tracking just how many have died. Fatuma Molu, a fellow gravel crusher, says many find livestock owners find it pointless to speak out about the problem because they think no action will be taken. She adds that the goat owners try as much as possible to keep them from grazing around the dump site.The government is committed to enforcing the ban.
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