Pollution highway: How Athi River transports millions of plastics into Indian Ocean

As at August 2020, a plastic tube for packaging jelly; manufactured in 1998 – for skin application – was still, almost entirely, intact. On the tube, the letters ‘Valon’ – the jelly manufacturer – were still clearly visible.

A team of researchers with Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI), Pwani University, and the Technical University of Mombasa, collected the tube, alongside a Blue Band container (also plastic) with the year 2015 written on it, at the Sabaki estuary – where the iconic Athi-Galana-Sabaki River joins the Indian Ocean.

“It is not news that plastics don’t biodegrade; not in the manner and speed we expect,” says Dr Eric Okuku, a marine pollution researcher at KMFRI and lead researcher for the study.

The researchers made the observation that most of the litter were typically of small packaging quantities, such as 30 g of Colgate toothpaste. Some of the toothpaste tubes were cut in the middle to allow – perhaps to make sure nothing goes to waste.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), has noted that some plastics take as long as 500 years to biodegrade in the natural environment.

Athi-Galana-Sabaki River arises in the Gatamaiyu forest – about 40km North of the capital city Nairobi – as Athi River and flows across Athi plains, through Athi river town, then takes a northeast direction where it is met by the Nairobi River – which flows through Nairobi. It finally meanders south east, meeting the Indian Ocean at the estuary, in Kilifi County.

The high levels of plastics in the river, the researchers say, could be attributed to illegal dumping – upstream; especially in Nairobi and the adjacent Athi River township.

A visit to the river – near Devki Steel Mills off Mombasa Road – confirmed to this journalist that indeed all manner of plastic is carried by its waters. Some of it is trapped on the banks. Others tagging on woody stumps stuck to the sediment. Others flowing with the current Indian Ocean bound.

Nairobi alone generates an estimated 3,000 tonnes of solid waste every day – most of it plastic. Due to a lack of adequate waste management systems, a big chunk ends up in illegal open dumping; visible all over the city.

In the open, the plastic can be dispersed by wind or by runoff water during heavy rains; eventually ending in large water bodies like the Indian ocean along Kenyan coast.

World over consensus points to the need to curtail plastic pollution. The much famed decision by Kenya to ban single use plastics came into effect in August 2017.

Well, guess what: soft plastics such as plastic bags, wrappers, and film, registered the highest mean weight of 2.34g per item collected by Okuku and team.

Having carried out their study in 2019, two years after the ban, the team hypothesizes, is due to plastic’s widespread use, durability, persistence, and buoyancy.

Even so, against the law, plastic paper bags, also known as single use plastics, are still in use today.

Just last week this journalist purchased boiled maize from a street vendor in Nairobi: it was handed over wrapped in clear transparent polythene paper.

It is strange though that today, more than 7 years from the ban on single use plastics, the merchandise is being peddled in the backstreets.

“Where are you getting these papers?” I asked the maize vendor.

“There is someone who delivers,” she responded, her eyes directly on mine; a skeptical look on her face. “Why do you ask?” she shot back, her suspicious gaze scanning my face.

“Because they were banned,” I said.

“Well, we know how to get them: how are we supposed to sell food to people like you?” she posed, rhetorically.

As recent as this year, the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), has been nabbing traders selling the polythene papers.

In May, the agency arrested two traders in Nairobi with 1.7 million plastic flat bags packed in bales.

The former Chief Officer for Environment in Nairobi County, Geoffrey Mosiria, takes cognizance of the resurgence in polythene paper use.

“There are people who are sneaking them in – possibly from neighboring countries. But in Kenya no plastic paper is manufactured.

“We are reliant on reports from members of the public. Whenever we receive a tip-off we respond accordingly,” he says.

Single-use plastics are bad for the environment health, says Hellen Kahaso, an environmentalist with Greenpeace Africa.

“They end up in the garbage immediately after it has been used. The rate at which they pile in the environment is quite fast. That’s why they were banned and should remain so,” she explains.

Peter Musila, a marine conservation biologist with Arocha Kenya, in Watamu, Kilifi, is very cognizant of the fact that plastic waste in the environment gets washed by rainfall runoff into rivers and streams that empty into large water bodies.

“We conduct beach clean-ups regularly. Based on data from the clean-ups, I can categorically say the ocean is taking in lots of plastic waste,” he says. “Some of the plastics we collect are from other countries; like our neighbor, Tanzania.”

From the study, Okuku and his team estimate that the amount of litter flowing downstream Sabaki estuary, every year, is between 6.6 and 615 million litter items – with plastics accounting for 90.8 per cent of it.

Why does it matter that our plastic waste is ending up in the ocean off the Kenyan Coast?

Dr. Jacqueline Uku, a senior research scientist at KMFRI, says: “Marine wildlife are part of our heritage and biodiversity. Their presence is part of the planet’s stability. The health of the marine ecosystem is intricately linked to our own well-being as human beings.”

 This story was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network