Africa's Push to Unveil Investment Boost in Plastics and Paper Recycling

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The Zimbabwean Minister for Industry, Commerce and Enterprise Development has called upon paper and plastics recycling companies in the country to make more investments in recycling infrastructure and awareness creation campaigns in order to ensure a clean environment. The Minister said this while officially opening the first ever conference of the Corporate Social Responsibility Network Zimbabwe in Harare.

According to Bimha, plastics and paper account for 43% waste in the urban areas. This is evident from the fact that recycling of paper and plastics reduced urban waste by 43%. Out of this, plastics contributed 18%, while paper contributed 25%. The latest studies carried out by the environmental regulator Environmental Management Agency (EMA) indicates that 12% of the total solid waste comprised of plastic waste. Also, roughly around 11% of plastic generated in the country is recycled. It must be noted that the country had earlier banned the use of expanded polystyrene.

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The Minister urged recycling companies to ensure involvement of more youths in collection of plastics around cities by offering reasonable payment. In addition, the recycling companies must do the needful to establish more number of collection points that work on more number of days, so as to make it more convenient for waste collectors to deposit the collected waste. The Ministry looks forward to closer association between recycling companies and small to medium enterprises, Bimha added.

The Ministry plans to introduce extensive education and training efforts on sustainable waste management programmes. These efforts are expected to yield encouraging results in a few years, the Ministry noted. Incidentally, Zimbabwe is ranked as one among the world’s largest producers of plastic waste, on account of imported plastics.