• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Nigerians love their plastic food packs but it’s toxic for the environment

Nigerians love their plastic food packs but it’s toxic for the environment

Abundant, affordable, lightweight, and durable, plastic takeaway packs are the choice material for food packaging by vendors, at parties and events, but improperly disposed, they are clogging drainage, contributing to flooding and posing a threat to the public health and the environment, writes Mercy Ayodele

From the roar of street music blaring from roadside speakers, the honking bedlam of cars, tricycles and Danfo buses dueling over a right of way on cramp roadways where pedestrians hold their noses over open gutters brimming with litter, Ojuelegba is the heartbeat of Lagos.

On every side of the busy road are restaurants and roadside food vendors providing ready-made meals to hungry Lagosians who are too tired to cook a meal after getting home from a long day of work.

Asides from the choking noise of the area, it is impossible to miss the stench of the drainages swarmed with disposable plates popularly called “takeaway packs” by Nigerians.

Blessing Adeniyi, a middle-aged woman is one of the many food vendors in the bustling area.

Like many other vendors, Adeniyi sells rice, spaghetti, beans, and a host of varieties to many customers daily.

She sells her meals in two types of packs. One is the foam-like takeaway which comes in different colours and the other is the transparent white pack which can be reused.

“If you use takeaway, it is free but if you want the plastic (referring to the transparent plate) you pay an extra N150, if you don’t want to pay extra just buy takeaway,” she said.

Adeniyi is just one of the many Nigerians who think foam-like packs are not plastics. However, both are plastics just different kinds and one is more dangerous to the environment than the other.

Not all Plastics are the same

From parties to restaurants and street food vendors, Nigeria is brimming with toxic plastic packaging materials that hurt the environment and public health.

Read also: Coca-Cola, RecyclePoints clean-up community markets across Nigeria, recovers 557kg of plastic waste

It is an easy choice for food vendors as it is cheap and durable making them suitable for packaging meals.

However, after being used by end-users, it does not just go away, it ends up on the streets, roads, drainages, and if lucky in a waste bin, all constituting environmental menace, potentially exacerbating climate change effects.

The term “plastic” does not refer to a single material even though it is often spoken about as a single material.

While both are called takeaway packs, the first which is foam-like is called Expanded polystyrene (EPS). EPS is a white foam plastic material produced from solid beads of polystyrene and it has a wide variety of use cases. It is also used by industries to cushioning electrical appliances.

The other is made from Polypropylene (PP). This is a thermoplastic “addition polymer” made from a combination of propylene monomers.

Fig.1 shows the type of takeaway packs examined in this article. A is the aluminium takeaway pack; B: Expanded polystyrene (EPS) takeaway pack; C: Polypropylene (PP) takeaway pack while D is Polypropylene reusable food saver.

Why EPS is worse

Both EPS and PP types of plastics are both harmful as they are derived from petroleum hydrocarbons (crude oil) but the EPS poses more threat to human health and the environment.

While PP takeaway packs can be reused for other purposes, EPS can only be used once.

EPS takeaway packs are tough to recycle, meaning many people have to dispose of them in landfills and could take over 500 years to decompose. When burnt, EPS releases large amounts of Carbon Monoxide and other toxic chemical compounds into the environment which are hazardous for health.

Also, since they do not decompose, they end up clogging up drainages, causing floods. PP also takes about 500 years to decompose but they can be easily recycled into other products.

This was taken near Coker Bus Stop, along Lagos – Badagry Expressway

 

A ban on EPS takeaway packs

Nigeria is already reeling from the devastating impacts of climate change, including flooding, which has caused repeatedly delivered fatal cocktails in rural and urban communities. Floods render people homeless, destroy farms, cause loss of lives annually.

Takeaway packs blocking drainages will only exacerbate the flooding and affect many more people.

In 2012, floods displaced 2 million people in Nigeria, an additional 100000 in 2015, 92000 in 2016, 250000 in 2017, and in 2018, the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) reported that 1.9 million people were affected.

Clogged sewage systems become the perfect breeding environment for mosquitoes and flooding washes away footpaths, causing people to move around in dirty water from overflowing gutters, polluting major sources of drinking water leading to the spread of cholera and typhoid fever.

Leslie Adogame, executive director at Sustainable Research and Action for Environmental Development (SRADev Nigeria) said the federal government needs to swing into action to immediately ban the use of plastics that are not recyclable.

“Although, we cannot ban all the plastic in one day, EPS should be banned, they are of no use, they are not needed. There are alternative ways of packaging food, we are not going to die, Nigerians will innovative,” Adogame said.

In 2018, the Federal House of Representatives passed the Plastic Bags (Prohibition) Bill, which sought to address the environmental menace of plastic pollution, relieve pressure on landfills and protect the environment. Three years on, the bill is yet to be passed into law.

Kenya, Rwanda, and 32 countries have adopted nationwide taxes or bans on plastics but Nigeria is still lagging behind.

Babatunde Sorinola, the CEO of Carey-out packs, a company providing eco-friendly alternatives to plastic packaging said while he is hopeful that the ban will start taking effect in the nearest future, there are concerns.

“Without the necessary investment in creating indigenous safer alternatives for our packaging needs as a country, a total ban on plastic might yet be unrealistic,”Sorinola said

Rita Idehai, the CEO of Ecobarter, an integrated waste reduction, recovery, and recycling social enterprise also explained that a plastic ban may not be realistic for Nigeria.

“Plastics are still the cheapest, most functional, and versatile alternatives. I don’t even think that plastics are the problem, I think our linear and fast consumption pattern is the problem,” Idehai said.

Some numbers about plastics and climate change

Nigeria has been named one of the ten most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. The increased use of plastic is making its fight against climate change hard.

Nigeria is ranked the 9th highest country producing unmanaged plastic. According to the Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nigeria generates some 32 million tonnes of waste per year, one of the highest amounts in Africa. Of the amount generated yearly, 2.7 million tonnes is plastic waste most of which (70percent) ends up in landfills, sewers, beaches, and water bodies.


Burning plastic also releases black carbon (soot), which contributes to climate change and air pollution.

According to Heinrich Böll Foundation, Nigeria remains Africa’s second-largest importer of plastic in the primary form which is used for the production of more items with high local demands. Accounting for 75 percent of imported plastics in primary forms are polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinylchloride, and polyesters.

Between 1996 and 2017, Nigeria imported more than 20 million tonnes of plastics, a figure that could double by 2030 if reliance on plastic is not controlled. 17 percent of plastic import comes from the United States of America, closely followed by the Republic of Korea at 13 percent and India at 9 percent.

Recycling is an option, however, not all plastics are recyclable, and very few are recycled compared to plastic production. 80 percent of plastic waste ends up in landfills and dumpsites while just 12 percent are recycled.

Adogame explained that there must also be aggressive awareness to tackle the crisis and the government has a huge role to play.

“This must be a top to bottom approach because the cankerworm of plastic has eaten deep. There is no how you will campaign about how plastic waste affects climate change that you will make any meaningful change, no one will listen.

There is a gap between poverty and sustainability; the rich people don’t understand it, not to talk of the poor. The only way you can move is taking a bold step to ban plastics, until we take a bold step, we are not going to get anywhere,” Adogame said.

This story was produced under the NAREP Climate Change Media 2021 fellowship of the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism.