How banning plastic prevents flooding

Olivia Rempel*

By GRID-Arendal

August 2^nd, 2018

On the surface, it doesn’t seem like a big improvement. Looking down at one of the streams that flows through Kibera, a large informal community on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, the water runs black and garbage piles up along the edges. But if you ask Pastor Evans, the director of Soweto Baptist School, this is a huge change.

“Formerly, we were spending about 100,000 ($1,000 USD) every time the rain comes to clear the school compound from the trash and the sewage,” he says. “But when the plastic bags were banned, now the water flows. It has helped us a lot and we feel the relief.”

In August 2017, Kenya implemented one of the strictest bans on lightweight plastic bags in the world with large fines and possible prison sentences as deterrents from selling or using them.

While the transition to reusable bags was difficult for some, for many people living in Kibera, the benefits have outweighed the inconvenience. Plastic bags often block the waterways and during the rainy season cause flooding which damages the nearby shanties. But one year into the plastic bag ban, the waterways are significantly less clogged and the water flows more freely.

Train track that runs through the centre of Kibera. Photo credit: Rob Barnes

Soweto Baptist School sits only a few metres from a stream that runs through Kibera. Often during heavy rains the water would spill over the banks, break through the iron sheet walls, and flood the school buildings.

Naomi Wangare, a student at Soweto Baptist School, knows the challenges of this too well.

Sometimes it enters into our class,” she says. “It’s really a big problem, because when our books fall down they get wet and dirty.”

Pastor Evans and his students at Soweto Baptist School. Photo credit: Rob Barnes

Naomi Wangare, a student at Soweto Baptist School. Photo credit: Rob Barnes

The water from the stream carries with it raw sewage and some slaughterhouses upstream release their discharge into rivers. Though more recently government regulators have begun to crack down. Close contact with this water can cause diseases like typhoid or cholera. Although banning plastic bags does not improve the water quality, it reduces how often community members are forced to come into contact with the dirty water.

The stream the runs next to Soweto Baptist School. Photo credit: Rob Barnes.

These interconnected problems are not unique to Kenya. Although Kibera is one of the largest, there are other informal settlements across the African continent that share the same challenges Kibera faces.

Kenya was not the first country to ban plastic bags and many countries are following their example. This summer Benin became the latest country to implement a ban. But Kenya is not stopping at plastic bags.

There have been talks about banning plastic bottles in a similar fashion. Although immediate progress stalled in early 2018, only time will tell. The first mention of a plastic bag ban was in 2007 and it wasn’t implemented for another decade. The success of the plastic bag ban could pave the way for plastic bottles.

Garbage in the stream near Soweto Baptist School. Photo credit: Rob Barnes

*Olivia Rempel is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. In the summer of 2018 she received the Human Rights Center Fellowship from the University of California Berkeley, and through that fellowship has been working with GRID-Arendal to help document the challenges associated with wastewater in Africa.

This series of news articles is part of the Wastewater Management and Sanitation Provision in Africa Project, a partnership between the African Development Bank (AfDB), UN Environment and GRID-Arendal. The project is supported by the AfDB through its Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Initiative (funded by the Governments of Burkina Faso, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands), and the Multi-Donor Water Partnership Programme (funded by the Governments of Canada and Denmark). The project is also funded by the Government of Norway and UNEP, and technically supported by GRID-Arendal.