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Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 04:46:40 -0700
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Subject: Thursday AfricaDigest (4/7/05):Flower of Africa: A Curse That's
Blowing in the Wind


April 7, 2005
NAIROBI JOURNAL
Flower of Africa: A Curse That's Blowing in the Wind
By MARC LACEY
New York Times

NAIROBI, Kenya, April 1 - Surrounded by all the asphalt and car fumes
of this overgrown African capital, hidden among the tin-roof shacks in
the sprawling slums and the forested parklands, there are some rather
beautiful blooms.

In and around overpopulated Nairobi, one can spot the tiny purple and
white flowers of the knotweed, or the bright yellow blooms of the
blackjack weed or the elongated appendages of the devil's horsewhip.
"The beauty and almost infinite variety of our wildflowers is one of
the greatest pleasures for the traveler in East Africa," Teresa Sapieha
wrote in her 1989 book "Wayside Flowers of East Africa."

But this is a story of a different kind of flower, which also comes in
many colors but lacks the beauty of the many varieties discovered in
nature by Ms. Sapieha. All over Nairobi, and all over Africa, are ugly
artificial blooms that mar the landscape and that environmentalists
want plucked up and removed.

These flowers are cheap, thin plastic bags that are tossed to the
ground by consumers. This kind of litter has reached a critical mass in
Kenya - clogging streams, choking animals and piling up into little
mountains of disease.

These bags are different from the ones that Westerners carry their
groceries in from the neighborhood supermarket; the Kenyan bags are so
thin they barely hold a few mangoes or a few pounds of corn meal
without tearing.

Their delicate nature makes reuse impossible and leads to their
frequent introduction into nature, where experts say they tend to
remain without breaking down for somewhere around 1,000 years. The bags
are so pervasive in this part of the world that many have taken to
calling them "African flowers," as if they were local varieties of
roses or bougainvillea.

"You can't miss these bags," said Clive Mutunga, an environmental
economist in Kenya who is seeking to clean up the mess. "It's gotten to
the point where it's almost become our national flower."

Wangari Maathai, the assistant environmental minister in Kenya and 2004
Nobel Peace Prize winner, says the sacks provide a breeding place for
malarial mosquitoes, helping spread one of the continent's major
killers.

"I'm not saying don't use plastics at all," Dr. Maathai said recently
as she extolled the virtues of more homegrown bags, like those made of
sisal or cotton, or the traditional baskets, which were what people
used before plastic came along.

A recent study by the National Environmental Management Authority and
the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis estimated
that more than 100 million light polythene bags, many of them thinner
than 30 microns, are handed out each year in Kenyan supermarkets, which
is more than 4,000 tons of the bags every month. The study recommended
banning the thin bags, which are believed to make up most of the
litter. Other bags, it said, should be taxed to provide a financial
incentive for bag manufacturers to come up with more environmentally
friendly alternatives.

The tax could then go to support recycling efforts, which are not
common in Africa, says the report, which was financed by the United
Nations Environment Program.

The report notes that there would be some job losses if Kenya outlawed
the manufacture of plastic bags, which is a booming industry here that
supplies all of East Africa. But it notes that other jobs would
probably be created among cotton bag manufacturers. Nairobi's street
children and others might also earn some income from picking up
plastics if a recycling program was started.

Kenya, which profits from the many tourists who come to witness its
pristine landscape, is not the first African country to try to clean up
its act. Rwanda recently banned plastic bags that are less than 100
microns thick and it took such a tough enforcement stand that the
police would dump out the goods on the road if they found shoppers with
them. "The black plastic bag has disappeared from Kigali," the United
Nations Environment Program said, referring to the capital of Rwanda in
a recent statement on the issue.

South Africa has also imposed a ban on bags thinner than 30 microns,
which are so flimsy that one's finger can easily pierce them. Other
more durable bags are taxed by South Africa, which gives some of the
revenue to a plastic bag recycling company.

Somaliland, a breakaway state in northwestern Somalia, outlawed plastic
bags as well, although passing the law has not appeared to put much of
a dent in the problem there. In local parlance, the plastic bags there
are called "Hargeisa flowers" because they pop up everywhere in and
around Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital. "The bags have not only become
an environmental problem, but also an eyesore," Abdillahi Duale,
Somaliland's information minister, recently told the United Nations
News Service.

Eliminating the bags is regarded primarily as a task that falls on
shopkeepers. Nakumatt Holdings, one of Kenya's largest supermarkets,
has said it backs the effort to clean up the country's landscape.

But the problem lies as well with the consumers throwing them into the
wind. Kenya is considering an antilittering campaign not unlike its
other public service campaigns - encouraging people to use condoms, pay
their taxes, drive safely and seek a woman's consent before sex.

To reach the next generation of potential litterers, the United Nations
Environmental Program has produced a children's book in which a little
boy named Theo alerts all the grown-ups around his town to the menace
of discarded plastic bags by collecting them and rolling them into a
ball that soon grows bigger than he is.
-----------------
The days come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a
distant
friendly party, but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts
they
bring, they carry them as silently away. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer
and
philosopher (1803-1882)
----------------
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