More Recycling

My obsession with the plastic bottles has paid off. 

Last night, at a leaving drinks, I got talking with someone from USAID, an education specialist. I can’t remember what led us from education to plastic, perhaps just my sheer bloody-mindedness,  that, and I had just read that in Afghanistan, USAID was funding recycling plants. We talked about the mountain of plastic bottles, how only a couple of years ago there were just one or two bottling plants, and now there are 10; how on some of his field trips, he has used bottled water to wash, not for fear of contamination, but because there wasn't any water. 

I casually mentioned my new found fact about USAID in Afghanistan (I am nothing if not direct!). Really, he says, and an eyebrow shoots so high it becomes hidden under a mop of curly hair. You should talk to Karen, her husband is working on something about that. 

It was a while before I did speak to Karen, and then a while before we got on to the subject of plastic. We first talked about the small house she shares with her husband on the banks of the Nile, and its secret garden of birds and lizards, and our shared love of buying fabrics from places we have been; India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam, and having them sit folded neatly in boxes at scattered homes of friends and family. I hear your husband is working on a project to recycle plastic bottles, I say, explaining it is a bit of a pet subject of mine right now. And, so she tells me the story. Of how her husband, an environmental scientist, came to visit her in Juba, last year, and saw the situation with the bottles. He knew that if he stayed, it would have to be something he worked on. And so began the arduous task of trying to get those with money interested in a project that did not involve conflict or peace building or democratic governance; five months of proposal writing, applying for grants, endless meetings. Then, just when it seemed like there was no where left to go, an offer came through: $500,000 from the United Nations Environment Programme and the French Embassy. 

The programme started last year and sees plastic bottles gathered up and sent to a factory where they are chopped into pieces and sent by road to Uganda. PET, the type of plastic used to make the bottles, cannot be melted down and remoulded on its own. It needs to be combined with other types of plastic and some chemical  to break it down. So it goes to Uganda, or it goes to China, where it is used to make fleece.

There are several elements to the programme. Awareness raising in the villages and in Juba, about the  environmental impact of burning plastic, the harm to the water the soil, the health of children. There is a payment for those who do collect them and within that a certain amount of protection for children, who in other countries are often pulled out of school to collect plastic bottles and other recyclables, and protective gear for those who live on and near the landfill and who daily sift through dirty syringes and medical waste to find something to sell, often discarded food, but now  plastic bottles.

Is it working I ask? She shrugs. You should talk to my husband. So hopefully, that’s what I will do next.