Early in the morning, Alice Wangui prepares to open her vegetable stall in the outdoor Kinoo Market, some 13 miles northwest of central Kenya. She unpacks ginger, red bell peppers, zucchini, onions and tomatoes, hanging them under a colorful umbrella that shields them from the rising sun.
A man pulls up on a motorcycle and drops off a bundle of reusable shopping bags at Wangui’s booth. Made from polypropylene, a type of plastic that is more durable and easier to recycle, these thicker tote bags are supposed to be long-lasting.
Since Kenya initiated a strict plastic bag ban in 2017, with heavy penalties for those who flout it, these alternative tote bags line the stalls like Wangui’s throughout the market, ready for customers who haven’t brought their own reusable bags. There’s much less plastic on the streets now, said Wangui.
Before the ban was introduced, grocery stores in the country were handing out over 100 million bags per year, despite a lack of waste disposal infrastructure to keep them out of the environment. Plastic bags clogged waterways and drainage systems, which made flooding worse during the rainy season. More than half of all cattle near cities and towns had plastic in their stomachs, according to a government-supported study, and in Nairobi, some slaughterhouses were removing up to 20 plastic bags from inside cows.
Kenya is considered to have the strictest penalties in the world, making manufacturing, importing or selling single-use carriers punishable by a prison sentence of up to four years or fines up to $40,000. Anyone caught using them also faces a fine, which so far has been between $300 and $1,500, and a possible prison sentence of up to a year.
Two years on, as the country prepares to roll out new limits on more single-use plastic items ― banning plastics from parks and beaches effective June 2020 ― the success of Kenya’s bag ban remains mixed.
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