Energy & Climate
Energy hubs in Africa
New Nottingham project to turn schools in Kenya into renewable energy hubs.
5 January 2025
The governments of Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe have launched a $90m project to reduce the release of hazardous chemicals from plastics in a sector-based approach covering the automotive, electronics and construction industries.
Hazardous chemicals, including Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), are used in a wide range of plastic products to enhance their properties.
POPs remain intact for decades, accumulate in the environment and are released throughout the lifecycle of these plastics, harming human health, the environment and the economy.
Their presence in plastics also limits circularity, as POPs-contaminated materials cannot be safely reused, recycled or reintroduced in the value chain.
The Stockholm Convention has been adding POPs, which are are commonly used as additives in plastic components in industries, to its annexes for global phase out.
Addressing product design to avoid these ‘problematic additives’ is of high priority for immediate action to avoid a future tsunami of hazardous waste and protect human health and the environment.
African countries are both major importers and rapidly growing local producers or assemblers of plastic products likely to contain POPs.
The lack of strong control of imported articles – combined with limited formal business models for circular plastic products, low segregation levels of contaminated plastics from recyclable plastics and a lack of scaling up of innovative solutions – means countries of the region are an important source of POPs released into the local and global environment.
Although the use and presence of POPs additives in plastics is being well documented globally, little literature is available on the presence of POPs in plastic products on the African continent.
‘Our country is participating in the project to support the shift from a chemical-based approach, by addressing the full value chain of plastics in the automotive sector, covering all hazardous chemicals included in this value chain.’
MARGARET MOLEFE
Director of Hazardous Chemical Management at South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, South Africa
The Circular and POPs-free Plastics in Africa project will be led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and support from the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for Training and Technology Transfer for the African Region.
It will support the five countries to adopt and enforce upstream policies and financial instruments; work with plastic product designers, manufacturers and assemblers to implement circular economy practices and eliminate or replace problematic products with more sustainable alternatives; assist recyclers and collectors to separate hazardous plastics fractions and raise awareness.
‘This is UNEP’s first sector-based project targeting POPs in plastics directly through a circular economy approach to reduce the use of hazardous chemicals at source. Plastic additives have a range of harmful properties from environmental persistence, toxicity and endocrine disruption, and are present everywhere, so this project has global relevance.’
SHEILA AGGARWAL-KHAN
Director of UNEP’s Industry and Economy Division
The project will provide targeted training for automotive, electronics and construction sector companies, and regulators, on avoiding hazardous plastic additives, and support fundraising activities for the disposal of POPs-containing plastics.
It aims to help countries establish sustainable funding sources for the environmentally sound management of hazardous plastic wastes.
Each project country has selected one sector – known to use plastic-containing products with a high likelihood of POPs contamination – to work in, based on national context and priorities.
‘By applying solutions in a total of three sectors, successful practices can be scaled in and outside the selected sectors’, says Percy Onianwa, director of the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for Training and Technology Transfer for the African Region.
The project is part of the UNEP Plastics Initiative, a comprehensive programme aimed at addressing the escalating global issue of plastic pollution.
It consolidates all UNEP’s plastic-related projects into a unified programme, focusing on activating and scaling-up actions at the global, regional and national levels.
Over its five-year period, the project will also address the existing data gaps in each country’s selected sector through comprehensive studies on the industry, its plastic-containing products and its plastic waste.
In addition, alternatives for POPs-containing plastics and suitable technologies to manage POPs-contaminated waste in an environmentally sound manner will be further identified.
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