Adow Sheikh Aden, 32, was mocked when he started gathering empty plastic water bottles, broken buckets and old jerry cans around one of the world’s largest refugee camps.
“Everyone used to laugh and say I am mad because I am collecting rubbish. Here it is not normal to do such things,” Aden said at the Dadaab refugee camp in eastern Kenya’s Garissa County, near the Somali border.
“But then I explained I am helping to keep our environment clean and our community healthy, and also I am selling the plastic to earn money so that I can manage my life and my family better,” he said.
Illustration: Mountain People
Having fled war in Somalia, Aden is part of a small group of refugees that has have taken up the fight against the plastic waste generated in Dadaab — and also earns an income from it.
Dadaab’s waste recycling project, set up by the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) just over a year ago, has only eight refugee staff memers, but initial results are promising and the plan is to grow, aid workers said.
In a cement-and-iron building equipped with a plastic shredder and compressor, the group has recycled about 6 tonnes of plastic waste so far, generating about 160,000 Kenyan shillings (US$1,590) in revenue.
Plastic recycling has huge potential as a sustainable business for refugees and could be a model for other large camps, such as Bidi Bidi in Uganda, Kakuma in Kenya and Nyarugusu in Tanzania, KRCS project officer Nelly Saiti said.
“We are collecting just a fraction of the plastic waste that is recyclable in Dadaab and so a lot more revenue can be made from this,” she said.
The next step is to train refugees in entrepreneurship so they can take control of the project, reducing their dependence on aid, she added.
PLASTIC OVERLOAD
One million plastic drink bottles are purchased each minute globally, while about 500 billion disposable plastic bags are used worldwide every year, the UN said.
It ran a campaign for World Environment Day on Tuesday to raise awareness of the urgent need to beat plastic pollution.
Nearly one-third of plastic packaging escapes waste collection systems and at least 8 million tonnes of plastic leak into the oceans each year, smothering reefs and threatening marine life.
Plastic also enters water supplies and the food chain, where it could harm humans in the long term, the UN said.
Action is gearing up around the world — from countries banning plastic bags to companies vowing to cut their usage of plastic — yet more efforts are needed to reduce and recycle plastic, environmentalists have said.
The sprawling refugee camp at Dadaab is no different.
Situated 475 km east of Nairobi, Dadaab is home to more than 200,000 refugees, largely from Somalia, who depend on aid — much of it packaged in plastic.
The UN established Dabaab in 1991 as Somalia descended into civil war and the camp has since mushroomed, with more refugees streaming in, uprooted by drought and famine, as well as ongoing insecurity. Many have lived there for years.
The settlement — spread over 30km2 of semi-arid desert — has schools, hospitals, markets, police stations, graveyards and a bus station.
Residents have few ways to earn a living other than rearing goats, manual labor and running kiosks sewing clothes, selling camel meat or charging cellphones from solar panels.
Kenyan government restrictions mean refugees from cannot leave the camp to seek work.
As a result, people are poor. They live in tarpaulin tents or shacks made of corrugated iron and branches, and rely on rations of cooking oil, milk powder, rice and sugar — much of it sent by foreign donors in plastic packaging.
There is no accurate data on the amount of plastic waste produced in Dadaab, but aid workers have estimated that hundreds of thousands of tonnes are generated annually.
A 2015 Red Cross study said that 270,000 jerry cans were discarded each year.
Plastic water bottles and other trash add to the waste, often burned at informal dumps scattered throughout the camp.
“Humanitarian organizations have a role to play,” said Kathrine Vad, a sustainability advisor for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which supports the Dadaab project.
The agency is working to cut the volume of plastic, especially packaging, used in its operations and to extend the life of plastic products by improving their quality, she added.
CHANGING MINDS
At the recycling plant in the KRCS compound near Dadaab, workers wearing overalls, facemasks and ear protectors push pieces of plastic buckets and chairs into a funnel atop the shredder.
The machine’s blades slice the plastic noisily into hundreds of thousands of shards, which pour out in a heap.
It is loaded into sacks and sold to two firms, Premier Industries and Polytech Plastics Industries, which transport it to Nairobi.
With his monthly wage of 8,000 shillings, worker Abtidon Ali Mahat, 45, a resident of Dadaab since 2011, has been able to get married, build his own makeshift home and buy three goats, he said.
In the past year, he has saved 12,000 shillings, he added.
“My wife is now pregnant and I will use this money for her and the baby, and also to buy some more goats,” he said.
The refugees want to expand the business, but said they need extra staff and a vehicle to cover more of the camp.
They face other challenges, too.
Collecting waste can carry a stigma in these communities, which see it as a “low job,” and many refugees have yet to grasp the health risks of burning plastic and releasing toxic fumes.
Views are gradually changing, but greater awareness is needed to tackle misconceptions and deepen understanding of the benefits of recycling, Red Cross workers said.
Besides challenging views on waste inside Dadaab, the project could also help shatter stereotypes about refugees outside the camp, Saiti said.
“It shows that refugees are not a burden as some people think, but that they can be contributors in our societies — not only in terms of income-generation, but also in environmental protection,” she said.
As it has striven toward superiority in most measures of the Asian military balance, China is now ready to challenge the undersea balance of power, long dominated by the United States, a decisive advantage crucial to its ability to deter blockade and invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). America expended enormous treasure to develop the technology, logistics, training, and personnel to emerge victorious in the Cold War undersea struggle against the former Soviet Union, and to remain superior today; the US is not used to considering the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
Since the end of the Cold War, the US-China espionage battle has arguably become the largest on Earth. Spying on China is vital for the US, as China’s growing military and technological capabilities pose direct challenges to its interests, especially in defending Taiwan and maintaining security in the Indo-Pacific. Intelligence gathering helps the US counter Chinese aggression, stay ahead of threats and safeguard not only its own security, but also the stability of global trade routes. Unchecked Chinese expansion could destabilize the region and have far-reaching global consequences. In recent years, spying on China has become increasingly difficult for the US
The annual summit of East Asia and other events around the ASEAN summit in October and November every year have become the most important gathering of leaders in the Indo-Pacific region. This year, as Laos is the chair of ASEAN, it was privileged to host all of the ministerial and summit meetings associated with ASEAN. Besides the main summit, this included the high-profile East Asia Summit, ASEAN summits with its dialogue partners and the ASEAN Plus Three Summit with China, Japan and South Korea. The events and what happens around them have changed over the past 15 years from a US-supported, ASEAN-led
Lately, China has been inviting Taiwanese influencers to travel to China’s Xinjiang region to make films, weaving a “beautiful Xinjiang” narrative as an antidote to the international community’s criticisms by creating a Potemkin village where nothing is awry. Such manipulations appear harmless — even compelling enough for people to go there — but peeling back the shiny veneer reveals something more insidious, something that is hard to ignore. These films are not only meant to promote tourism, but also harbor a deeper level of political intentions. Xinjiang — a region of China continuously listed in global human rights reports —
RSS