Plastic Waste in Zimbabwe
Sustainable Tourism
There is already a strong push for accelerating environmental sustainability and a circular economy for plastics in Zimbabwe. The Environmental Management Agency in Zimbabwe have instigated several initiatives to reduce plastic waste and improve its management, including plastic bans and levies. Despite these efforts, plastic waste continues to be burned in the open air or leak from overflowing landfills. According to the EMA, 394 million kgs of plastic was imported into Zimbabwe, with only 40 million being recycled. The rest can end up a source of pollution, clogging drains, and leaking into rivers and waterways endangering wildlife and the local economy.
SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
Tourism is Zimbabwe’s third-largest industry, with over 2.5 million foreign visitors per year. With these tourists comes a lot of single-use plastic. According to the Institute of Environmental Studies, the sector contributes up to 18% of all plastic waste generated. Single-use plastic food and beverage containers, straws, carrier bags and toiletries used in hospitality can leak into the environment causing untold damage. Plastic waste can clog storm drains leading to flash flooding, it gets ingested by farm animals and wildlife, and it leaks into rivers poisoning water supplies.
PLASTIC WASTE-FREE HOTELS
Searious Business delivered training to hotels, together with the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority and the Africa Institute, on how to track and reduce single-use plastic in hotel operations and best practices for waste management.
This training is part of the umbrella project ‘Strengthening knowledge and capacity to prevent and reduce releases of plastic waste in Zimbabwe’, implemented by the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Zimbabwe and the EMA in cooperation with the Secretariat of The Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, and financed by the Norwegian Retailers Environment Fund, the Governments of Norway and Sweden, and Norad - Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation.
Following the training, the tourism outlets were provided with templates so they can record their plastic use and technical guidance to help them create their roadmap to plastic waste-free hotels in the future.
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