Some of the luxurious, lush suburbs of Nairobi justify the slogan that tourism promoters have given the Kenyan capital; ”The Green City under the Sun”. Quiet streets are lined by perfectly manicured lawns and shadowed by giant jacaranda trees.
But in the low-income areas, no description could be further from the truth. Parts of Nairobi look like deserted wasteland, and discarded plastic bags are constantly carried around the city by the wind.
Kenyan secondary school student Bansri Pattni, who entered an essay in a nationwide competition on the environment, tells of how he sits on a riverbank in Nairobi, and sees nothing but ”heaps of garbage, oil patches and two dead and decaying cats”.
Another entry to the competition, organised by the Kenya Organisation for Environmental Education (KOEE) to raise awareness ahead of World Environment Day on June 5, is a photograph showing cows and goats grazing in what seems to be a field of plastic bags.
Other photos show the Nairobi River, which runs through the vast Kibera slum. But calling it a river seems an extreme overstatement, as the water is nothing more than a slow, thick, brown trickle through riverbeds covered with old plastic bags and other undefinable waste.
The theme of this year’s World Environment Day is ”Green Cities”, and as Nairobi is home to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the city prides itself on organising a multitude of events to celebrate the day.
Tree-planting ceremonies, made even more popular after local daughter and environmentalist Wangari Maathai won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, are taking place in schools and parks, and neighbourhood clean-ups are being organised.
The nationwide school competition attracted about 750 entries from primary and secondary school students.
Elvis Ratemo, a third-grader, writes that every Kenyan should plant something, anything, green. Like a mango tree, or a banana tree, an orange tree or a pineapple plant. To set a good example, Elvis has planted a flower in an old margarine pot he got from his mother.
Tree-planting is indeed an important exercise, as trees are cut down at an alarming rate to be used as firewood and to build homes, but the real challenge facing Nairobi, according to KOEE’s Ken Oluoch, is waste, and how to manage it.
”Plastic bags are one of the main problems in Nairobi,” he says, but laments that a ban on flimsy plastic bags proposed earlier this year is ”not happening”.
In a study from the beginning of the year, Kenya’s National Environment Management Authority (Nema) and the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) said that ”plastic bags block gutters and drains, choke farm animals and marine wildlife and pollute the soil as they gradually break down”.
Nearly 100-million plastic bags are handed out each year in supermarkets alone, and as many of them are poor quality they are thrown away after just one shopping trip, making them a familiar eyesore in both urban and countryside areas, the study said.
Maathai has also warned of the link between discarded plastic bags and malaria, as bags can fill with rainwater and provide ideal breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Another side of the waste problem is illegal dumping, says KOEE director Dorcas Otieno.
”Industries, and even hospitals, dump waste in the night. Chemical waste is being dumped where people live”.
”It is possible to catch those who dump. But it does not happen,” says Otieno, and claims that employees within the Nairobi City Council, which is charged with keeping the city clean, are collaborating with the dumpers.
”The dumping is big business,” she says, adding that as long as the government does not take the problem seriously and dumpers are not caught and fined, the problem will persist. – Sapa-DPA