THE FIGHT AGAINST PLASTIC BAGS IN AFRICA

Andrea Micozzi, a master’s student in theoretical physics at Sapienza University and contributor to Treccani, writes from Tanzania about the continent’s leading role in the fight against plastic waste—and what it reveals about our own habits.

We are arriving in Tanzania, at Kilimanjaro International Airport, which is the country’s third airport. Just before landing, in addition to the usual security recommendations, the loudspeaker broadcasts a strange announcement: all passengers are asked to get rid of any plastic bags or report their importation to the authorities. Heavy penalties are imposed on violators.

In fact, the production and import of single-use plastic bags has been banned in Tanzania since June 2019, with some reasonable exceptions, such as the packaging of medical supplies. The first country in the world to take very restrictive measures in this regard was Rwanda, which banned bags in 2008, and all kinds of single-use plastic items in 2019. Since then, several African countries have followed suit, among them Botswana, Ethiopia and Kenya, where offenders even face imprisonment – up to four years!

It should come as no surprise that it is precisely in Africa that we find those countries leading the fight against plastic, which too timidly is becoming a worldwide battle. The lower industrial development and precarious economic conditions of African countries make the negative environmental impact of single-use plastic items more glaring. On the one hand, in fact, the absence of large plastic industries means that there is no economic interest in continuing the production of the bags, which are, moreover, viewed very negatively by a population still accustomed to reuse and strongly opposed to waste of resources. On the other hand, the lack of waste disposal systems puts the disastrous effects of the dispersion of disposable plastic into the environment in the public eye.

So those Europeans that landed at the foot of Kilimanjaro and were surprised at the sight of children at work in the fields and the gravel roads all the way to the city centre, are even more surprised to see that on the sides of the roads and in the fields, in the uncultivated land at the edge of the railway, there are not those piles of plastic and other rubbish that we are used to see in the suburbs of our cities. They ponder, those Europeans, that perhaps caring for the environment is not a recent invention of our part of the world, but rather a necessity and an ancient form of love of all those peoples still close to the earth, who toil in the mud and love the water that nourishes their plants. And they do not want to see their land covered in disposable plastic, an invention – that one – that the self-proclaimed developed countries can be proud of.