African Countries not forthright with plastic waste management - Senator Bamidele

Senator Salam Bamidele who was one of Nigeria’s representatives in the 6th Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament, has noted with concern that most Africa Countries have not been able to manage issues affecting the continent’s environmental sustainability due to lack of awareness and limited resources among others more especially on plastic waste management. 

Senator Bamidele who was speaking in an interview after a five-day joint delocalized Committee meeting of the Community Parliament in Winneba, Ghana, on the theme, “plastic waste management; challenges and prospects in implementing Community policy” this suggest that “in a meeting like this, we should be able to come up with very practical approaches to solving the problem. One of the approaches to solving the problem came out of the interactive session at the Town Hall meeting that was held on Friday, August 2, 2024 and that has to do with attitude”.

The joint Committees were Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources, the Committee on Mines and Energy and the Committee on Infrastructure.

According to him, a lot of people do not really understand that harming the environment through bad attitudes in terms of disposal of wastes, especially plastics is actually harming ourselves. “So, the moment people know that this harm actually affects them personally and also affects the future generation, they will begin to have the right attitude to solving the problems”.

He affirmed that governments of all these countries also have to be more proactive, adding that environmental sustainability is one of the major goals of the SDGs and countries have signed on to the SDGs.

But the big question is “what specific or practical actions are countries of the world mapping out to meet those goals? “In most places, we just come with the policy but there are no pragmatic actions, and those actions must also be reviewed, perhaps every two to three years to see how well we have gone”.

The senator suggested a reward package for communities, states, local government, municipalities, among others especially those who applied working strategies to solving the problems. “If we are able to do that, even in terms of budget funding - that any state, municipal or local government area that is able to reduce plastic waste in its area will be entitled to a markup of five or 10 percent of the budget that comes in, you will see deliberate actions by those principal players and the community leaders to ensure that they do that”.

He urged people to begin to see waste from the viewpoint of opportunities as wastes can be converted into so many things – energy, fertilizer, artwork like the presentation at the Town Hall Meeting among others.

“By the time we start seeing that, we will encourage children in schools who are not economically buoyant to look for opportunities in picking plastics on weekends and sell them to recycling plants and earn more money for their schooling. The earlier we encourage all these, the better”.