Dow has announced the extension of its partnership with recycling company Mr Green Africa in an effort to help fight the plastic waste challenge.
Dow says the partnership, launched in November 2019, has so far enabled it and Mr Green Africa to drive positive change in communities in Kenya, where a lack of waste infrastructure has led to plastic ending up in rivers and informal dumps, as well as creating a market for flexible plastic packaging which has enabled an additional source of income for workers in the informal waste sector.
By incentivising waste pickers with a higher, stable income and establishing sorting centres that allow them to bring plastic in for payment, and then enabling this to be processed in recycling centres, the partnership says it has not only created a new market for flexible plastic waste, but it has also made sorting materials more effective.
In fact, Dow estimates about 30 metric tonnes of flexible plastic waste – which would not have been collected previously – is now processed through Dow and Mr Green Africa’s waste stream every two months in Kenya.
The partnership hopes the second phase of the project will see it bring on a brand owner partner to close the loop by enabling the use of the recyclable flexible packaging in a new packaging application and the unrecyclable portions in innovative end-uses.
Additionally, in response to the pandemic, the project has pivoted to using technology to enable residential collection via an app developed by Dow’s technical team and deployed locally by Mr Green Africa.
Through the app, consumers can sort and separate the plastic waste in their homes, before scheduling it to be collected from their doorstep by Mr Green Africa.
This partnership is aligned with Dow’s global sustainability goal to enable the collection, reuse or recycling of one million metric tons of plastic globally by 2030. Dow has also committed to making all its products sold into packaging applications to be reusable or recyclable by 2035.