Kenya’s largest supermarket chain said on Wednesday it has begun using new biodegradable bags in response to growing environmental concerns about pollution by discarded flimsy plastic shopping containers.
”We are trying to keep away any hazards and it’s also part of our social responsibility to care for the environment,” said Mercury Anyango, a spokesperson for Nakumatt, Kenya’s leading retailer of groceries and household products.
The biodegradable bags, which were launched last week, are also plastic but specially treated to make them decompose more quickly than older versions, which can take 1 000 years to disintegrate, she said.
”Nakumatt started using the new product because the normal plastic bag is a problem for the environment, and has therefore chosen to support the world environment programme by using the degradable bags for packing goods,” she added.
Nakumatt uses more than 30-million bags every year at a cost of more than 40-million shillings (about R3,4-million) and Anyango said the change will cost 20% more.
In February, the Nairobi-based United Nations Environment Programme and Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai warned that Kenya faced a growing public health risk from the sea of bags swamping the country.
Plastic shopping bags that are not disposed of properly block gutters and drains, choke farm animals and marine wildlife and pollute the soil, they said.
In addition, they ”provide several million habitats for mosquitoes to breed that increases the risk of malaria”, Maathai said at the time, noting that the disease is a leading cause of infant mortality in Kenya and throughout Africa.
According to the state-run Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis and the National Environmental Management Authority, at least two million plastic bags are distributed each year to people shopping in supermarkets and kiosks in Nairobi alone. — Sapa-AFP