UN-Habitat, with support from The United Nations for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC) and the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoMSSA) has been organizing the Africa Waste webinar series consisting of five webinars.
The series aim to share knowledge and experiences to tackle common challenges in solid waste management observed in the African continent so that the member countries and cities can interactively learn solutions for improved solid waste management and shift towards urban circular economy.
Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing contemporary issues. Plastic is a widely consumed product and plastic waste has become a pollutant because it takes many years to decompose. As a result, plastic waste accumulates in landfills and in the wild, when improperly disposed of. Plastic is found even in the most remote areas of the world in different sizes and shapes. Compared to other materials, plastic has also a low recovery rate when recycled. A proper disposal of plastic waste remains a challenge. The series is back on the 7th of July, with the 5th webinar titled “Plastic pollution from waste – How to “stop the tap” of plastic leakage in African cities?”
It is known that about 80% of marine litter originates from land-based human activities. Furthermore, a big portion of marine litter is composed of plastic waste, some estimates say that every year, at least 11 million tons of plastic find their way into the world’s oceans. This is constituting an increasing risk to ecosystem health and biodiversity, while entailing substantial economic costs through its impacts on public health, tourism, shipping, fishing, and aquaculture.
This webinar highlighted the current findings of Waste Wise Cities Tool (WaCT), developed by UN-Habitat, and Waste Flow Diagram (WDF), developed by GIZ), focused on African cities to better grasp dynamics between solid waste management systems’ performances and plastic leakages as well as common trends in solid waste management in the Africa continent, while shedding light on emerging innovative solutions to tackle plastic pollution and stop plastic leakages.