-Flip-flopi dhow plastic boat comes into full view after making global headlines in 2019;
-As Kenya said to be one of the countries that has been a global pioneer in tackling plastic pollution;
MAARUFU MOHAMED-GOLFNEWSLINKS;
Lamu Island Town, is a UNESCO World Heritage site famous for being the oldest and best preserved Swahili settlement dating back to 1370.
It’s also home to the Flip-flopi dhow boat that global headlines in 2019 and currently docked on the beach next to a nondescript boatyard.
The dhow sits perched upon a structure by the entrance of the boatyard and its current state is a far cry from the glory days of its maiden voyage from Lamu, Kenya to Zanzibar, Tanzania.
It is undergoing a kind of postmortem to asses engineering flaws, what worked well and how the next one can be improved upon.
The Project currently collects 12 to 15 tons of plastic trash every month where they are then sorted, shredded and washed in-house.
The Flip-flop Project recently obtained a tractor to help gather recycled plastic from the homes of 700 mostly women community collectors.
Some of the collectors now make their full salary from collecting plastics, thus contributing to local employment.
Nine-meters in length, the dhow boat was made with 10 tons of plastic waste collected from the beaches of various towns and villages on the coast of Kenya and its exterior is adorned with a colorful patchwork of some 30,000 flip-flops giving it its famous vibrant, quilt-like façade.
“We saw that all our beaches were overwhelmed by plastic, and we thought, what we can do about this?” said Ali Skanda.
Skanda who is a renowned boat builder and the co-founder of The Flip-flop Project they decided to build a moving object that people in faraway places can see and be inspired by to do something about the plastic pollution in our environment.
Three years in the making, the Flip-flop was a spectacular success not only as a piece of innovative engineering but more importantly as an environmental campaign.
For two years, the boat docked at ports in numerous cities and towns across Kenya, Tanzania and even Lake Victoria and attracted thousands of spectators including lawmakers and students.
Head of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Life Cycle Initiative Llorenç Milà i Canals said the Flip-flop is a highly visible, shocking reminder that plastic is everywhere, and people are getting too used to see it in the oceans where it clearly does not belong.
“Bringing the colorful mix and match bits of recycled plastic into a boat that then sails across the ecosystems it wants to protect is a great way to shed light on our unsustainable penchant for producing cheap plastic products, using them, and then throwing them away,” he added.
The Project currently collects 12 to 15 tons of plastic trash every month, where they are then sorted, shredded and washed in-house.
Once regarded as the miracle material, affordable, flexible and durable with a seemingly endless array of uses in many industries, plastic has become a blight on the planet and human health.
Simply put, the world is drowning in plastic pollution and there is no end in sight and more than 430 million metric tons of plastics are produced each year globally, of which over two-thirds are short-lived products which soon become waste. It is expected that by the year 2060, this figure will triple if no action is taken.
Most of the plastic waste is burned, dumped or released into the environment where it breaks down and seeps into the food we eat, the water we drink and ultimately, into our bodies.
The situation is just as bad in the oceanwhere 11 million tons of plastic waste is dumped into the ocean each year an equivalent of one garbage truck every minute.
However, there is a growing awareness of the dangers of plastics thanks in part to events such as World Environment Day, marked on 5 June every year.
It is a reminder of the extent of the problem and the power of individuals to take action against plastic pollution, not only with the choices they make as consumers but to call on companies and governments to take comprehensive action through legislations against single-use plastic products.
With the theme, #BeatPlasticPollution, World Environment Day 2023 was hosted by Côte d’Ivoire in partnership with the Netherlands in June where Tens of millions of people, along with governments, companies, cities and community organizations took part in various activities around the world.
One of the countries that has been a global pioneer in tackling plastic pollution is Kenya and in 2017, the country introduced the world’s toughest ban on plastic bags, with anyone producing, selling or using a plastic bag risking imprisonment of up to four years or fines of US$40,000.
Recycled waste are put to use in Lamu Lamu where traditional woven Lamu chairs created using traditional carpentry and weaving techniques going back centuries currently utilizing 100 per cent plastic collected through community collectors.
The Flip-flop expedition is another example of Kenya’s broader leadership in addressing plastic pollution and last year Kenya hosted the UN Environment Assembly in its capital Nairobi, where Heads of State, ministers of environment and other representatives from UN Member States, adopted a resolution to end plastic pollution that would pave the way for an international legally binding agreement by 2024.
The Flip-flop Project plans to build on the success of the first dhow by building an even bigger boat that could sail to Cape Town, South Africa and beyond.
In the meantime, its 19 full-time staff are working to ensure that the original inspiration for combatting plastic pollution is not lost.
The organization now runs a course to teach young, often unemployed people from Lamu about plastic pollution and recycling combined with boat-building skills that the island is famous for.
New products include small taxi dhows made with 100 per cent in-house designed and manufactured moulds and locally collected and recycled plastic.
One of the other products the Project recently started producing is a taxi dhow which is currently being tested for commercial use with its 7 meters in length, this prototype dhow is part of The Project’s Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution Program.
They are also developing furniture, such as classroom benches, Swahili chairs and even doors, for which they have already received orders.
But, for all the promise of these new products made from 100 per cent recycled material, the fact remains that this kind of recycling is not a long-term solution to stopping the constant flow of plastics into the environment.
Recycling on its own is not working and less than 10 per cent of plastic ever produced is recycled, and a much smaller proportion is effectively recycled into the initial products namely bottles turned into new bottles
The Flip-flop Project Designer Katharina Elleke concedes that everything they are doing at the moment is essentially stopgap measures to deal with the avalanche of plastic trash that keeps pouring into nearby beaches and the mission and the message of the project remains the same-stop the production of more single use plastic products.
“Recycling is not the answer. We should design out waste in our global production systems. We have to design with circularity in mind before we produce anything so that whatever we produce can be remanufactured and reused, “said Elleke.
ENDS;