Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, and Forestry PS Festus Ng’eno has urged Kenyans to take up waste recycling initiatives to help mitigate climate. This he emphasizes with a reminder that wastes have value if well recycled and through the development of a circular economy that’s reliable.
As the world celebrated World Environment Day with the theme Beat Plastic, it was declared that it is essential to combat waste especially plastic waste that majorly ends up in our water bodies causing a menace to water life as well as land dumping of waste.
The PS further said the volume of waste collected has not been optimized based on market requirements but steps are being put in place towards achieving that. “Kenya is a leader in promoting waste recycling in the region. Though waste recycling, industries are faced with the challenge of operating in formalized, sustainable waste management systems,” he said.
As effective waste management is championed worldwide as one of the steps toward combating climate change, a conference on the same was hosted by Taka Ni Mali, the East African Business Council, and the Alliance for Science is hosting the inaugural Africa Waste is Wealth Series (AWWS).
An initiative that has been informed further by Taka Taka ni Mali’s program, Transform, under the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), Unilever, and Accelerator Lab.
The Eastern Africa Conference aims to provide stakeholders with a platform to evaluate waste management policies across different sectors of the economy as it also helps them recognize that urbanization is a key driver of waste management challenges in Africa.
The main aims of the conference are aimed at unite government institutions, private sector actors, and finance organizations to develop regional commitments to scale best-practice sustainable waste management models.
According to Taka Taka Patron Mary Ngechu, the conference will help identify policy and regulatory priorities for sustainable waste management as they seek to increase the recycled waste from only around 11% recycled.
Revealing that Africa currently generates about 80 percent of solid waste, which is worth an estimated eight billion dollars annually if recycled.
