The Darwin Initiative is a UK government grants scheme that helps to protect biodiversity and the natural environment through locally based projects worldwide.
In the first blog of the series we heard how plastic pollution can be transformed into something valuable and sold to benefit both local communities and the marine environment. This post features a project that is using plastic bags to breathe new life into the community through repurposing them for saplings in an effort to reforest Mt. Kenya.
In 2017 Kenya made the bold move to ban plastic bags. This decision was gazetted by Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Natural Resources and took effect on August 28th. Through political goodwill the action to ban plastic bags was enforced, however this brought about other challenges related to managing existing plastic waste, particularly in rural areas of the country.
Mt. Kenya Biodiversity Organization (Mt. KEBio) is the Nature Kenya site support group in Mt. Kenya West whose mandate is to monitor, educate, and advocate for environmental sustainability while improving the livelihoods of its members. The Mt. Kenya ecosystem provides water to key National Parks and generates half of the country’s total hydropower. It is an important water catchment – the source of the Ewaso Nyiro North and Tana River systems, which are vital to Kenya’s economic development, food security and energy generation.
Understanding the plastic issue at hand, Mt. KEBio embarked on creating awareness in local market areas and organised clean-up exercises. As a result of these awareness campaigns, Mt. KEBio successfully organised three clean-up activities in the Naromoru town, Burguret and Kibunja shopping centres where over 100kg of plastic waste was collected.
Saplings being propagated on recycled plastic milk packets, Credit – Good Hope Group
Once the waste had been collected and sorted, the group separated any reusable plastic bags that were found. These bags were repurposed by using them as tree seedling potting bags, where 500 seedlings were able to be planted in the community nursery. However, the efforts of the group do not stop there, as they are also promoting the re-use of plastic bottles as improvised drip-irrigation for watering tree seedlings in schools and local homesteads, especially during the dry season.
On-farm woodlot capacity has been enhanced through innovatively re-using plastic bags, providing the much-needed fuelwood and livestock fodder. Through this increased capacity at the local community tree nursery, more indigenous tree seedlings have been raised for planting in preparation for the next phase of the Mt. Kenya forest rehabilitation.
Lessons from Mt. KEBio have been replicated by another local community group ‘Good Hope’, a group of people living with disabilities. Good Hope has managed to raise 8,000 tree seedlings by re-using plastic bags as plant potting material. The group intends to sell the seedlings to the local communities.
More information on project 25-031 led by Nature Kenya can be found here. The full article for this project and others can be found in the Planet Plastic Darwin Newsletter here.