African tech solutions to plastic pollution can only flourish if there is consumer buy-in

Adwoa Coleman, Africa Sustainability & Advocacy Manager, Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastic and Afri-Plastics Challenge Judge

During a Harvard Business School Online Management Essentials class I took early in 2021, I learned that a key factor in the equation of enabling change, is successfully creating dissatisfaction with the status quo. Basically, to inspire others to change a behaviour, you need to show them why the current way is bad and lead them to their own conclusion that things can and should be done another way.

Globally, the data on the magnitude of plastic waste and plastic pollution is astronomical. In Sub- Saharan Africa alone, approximately 17 million tonnes of plastic pollution is generated each year, with only 11% recycled, mainly due to inconsistencies in solid waste management systems across communities. The remainder is burnt, buried, or dumped, with significant quantities of plastic entering streams, rivers, and lakes, contaminating the freshwater, marine ecosystem, and eventually the ocean.

Most of us have seen the information around plastic pollution presented to us in one form or another: the advert showing a marine biologist narrating what they witness out at sea, the symbol on the product you buy that implores you to “dispose” of it responsibly, the article every other day on your favourite news media or post on your social media feed, but are we listening? Are we doing anything differently?

Communication has been at the heart of the shift in consumer perception about environmental issues, presenting people with the hard-facing evidence, highlighting the devastating consequences to our planet and communities, and directing them to choices that mitigate the issues. In this way, getting the information out there seems to be having some effect but there is an urgent need to find solutions to this problem, and we need to go further, faster. I know this from my work with Dow, the Afri-Plastics Challenge, and as a citizen of this beautiful land. There is no one size fits all solution - it is an issue that needs to be tackled on multiple fronts.

One of the key considerations in solving the plastics waste challenge in Africa is how deeply intertwined socio-economic factors are with sustainability, recycling, and other environmental issues – they cannot be decoupled. The average person in developing economies does not care about or care to understand these issues unless it is a means to a job or livelihood.

So, we need to find solutions that raise awareness of the effects of plastic pollution, value of plastics packaging through its lifecycle if it is not discarded and incentivise its collection, thereby creating a market for the material while supporting jobs and livelihoods for waste pickers. This is a major component of our strategy for Africa at Dow and what the Government of Canada and Nesta Challenges is enabling through the Afri-Plastics Challenge.

For a circular economy for plastics to be achieved, it needs the support and full-hearted engagement of everyone involved in the supply chain. Communities will be pivotal in driving positive change, and creative, influential, and - most importantly - effective communications campaigns are essential for ensuring they are involved from the outset and understand the role that they must play.

Solving the plastics waste challenge also requires concerted technological innovation. Sub-Saharan Africa is a rich territory for home-grown innovation solutions; phones are now banks for millions enabling payments, transfers, and purchases at the touch of a button.

Within the plastic waste value chain, collectors and aggregators can now have material weighed, purchased and payments received in seconds through mobile platforms. People can sort their recyclables at home, request for pick up and pay for the service all through an app. Not to mention the countless innovative end-uses of plastic waste in furniture, backpacks, and even roads - the creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit coming from the region is truly astounding. However, for these innovations to have a significant impact, they require scale and demand. And this is where innovation in communication will play its part.

Through the Afri-Plastics Challenge, London-based innovation foundation Nesta Challenges will award £1.8 million in seed funding and prizes to creative campaigns, schemes, tools, and other interventions designed to inspire widespread behaviour change toward plastics waste in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is the third strand in a multi-million-pound fund from the Government of Canada that aims to scale viable solutions from Sub-Saharan African innovators – of which there are many - to tackle plastics pollution.

The first strand aims to support innovative solutions designed to manage plastic waste after it has been used and discarded (i.e. downstream solutions). The second strand will reward innovative solutions to reduce the volume of plastic in packaging and other products before it is used (i.e. upstream solutions).

The third strand recognises that without a shift in individual and community attitudes and behaviours to consumption and recycling through strong and engaging communications campaigns, the technological and engineering solutions developed in strands one and two cannot succeed.

What’s more, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) identify responsible consumption and production as one of the 17 key challenges that we must solve by 2030. Tackling plastic pollution contributes to achieving this goal (SDG12); it contributes to good health and well-being (SDG3) as we remove pollutants from food chains and drive down the volumes of waste being burnt. Tackling plastic pollution promotes gender equality (SDG5) as it helps support women and girls who are critical to the plastic management supply chain in low- and middle-income countries.

Tackling plastic pollution in Sub-Saharan Africa has far-reaching consequences for sustainable development and we know that there are innovators across the continent with scalable solutions that have the potential for global impact. So, we must tackle the communications challenge to ensure that people’s actions reflect their changed perceptions of plastics waste. We have seen this done successfully with the recent shift in attitudes in favour of a carbon-neutral global economy, so we have reason to be optimistic.

First, we need governments, businesses, and consumers to be dissatisfied with the status quo, to believe that things can and should be done differently to create a model for our desired future and take the actions required to get us there.

(Devdiscourse's journalists were not involved in the production of this article. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Devdiscourse and Devdiscourse does not claim any responsibility for the same.)