Empower in Tanzania
A new milestone in Empower’s journey has been reached. Together with local initiative takers and collaborators, we conducted our first clean-up in the African continent! Our first stop in the region starts with Tanzania. Tanzania is taking strong actions in the fight against plastic and has banned all plastic bags this year, according to The Guardian.
The plastic waste clean-up took place in the third largest city in Tanzania, the city of Arusha. With a population of 1,640,000 people, Arusha is also known to be the largest manufacturing and financial city in its parts of Tanzania. The high population density leads to a large amount of waste generation, especially plastic waste. Due to lack of proper waste management system, a lot of the waste goes astray. Our local collaborator saw this challenge and burned to find a better solution to the situation. As any plastic waste that is not possible to hand into recycling are left either on the streets or at the municipal dumping place, the drive for change was extensive.
Together with 30 waste collectors we collected 1,2 ton of plastic waste in 5 hours, of which 49,7 kg were hard plastics. The dedication and spirit of each of the participants was most commendable. We are very happy to have arranged a successful clean-up in Arusha and are optimistic that the engagement has created more awareness to the situation.
We hope inspiration to engage in the fight against plastic waste gone astray has increased 10 folds and we look forward to new cleanups in Arusha. Stay tuned for more announcements in the combat on plastic waste in Africa!
