Enabling a circular economy is a complicated challenge that governments, communities and businesses globally are struggling to solve. But as Dow’s work in Africa proves, solutions exist — and success comes when organizations and communities collaborate to create change rooted in local context.
The continent of Africa has long been hailed as the “next big growth market”
as its nations are home to some of the youngest
populations
in the world, set to be major
consumers
in the coming decades.
And in many cases, the continent’s ongoing development has become an accelerant
to ingenuity rather than a hindrance, allowing these nations to circumvent
systemic challenges with scrappy entrepreneurialism. This so-called
“leapfrogging” is the phenomenon of communities bypassing outdated Western ways
of doing things to gain a competitive edge. African nations have taken this
approach with solar
energy, banking
access, electricity
grids
and communication infrastructure. For example, when governments from
Ethiopia to Nigeria failed to install telephone lines to connect
communities, residents skipped the need for such infrastructure and jumped
straight to cellular connection with the onset of mobile technology.
Along similar lines, Africa is poised to tackle circularity challenges in a new
way through local ingenuity and a culture of entrepreneurship.
Leapfrogging in waste management
So, could this leapfrogging mentality be applied to accelerate the transition to
a circular economy in the developing world? Adwoa
Coleman certainly
believes so. The chemical engineer has held roles in both Africa and the US for
the last 10 years. In a recent role at
Dow, she used
her skills to find solutions to waste collection, reuse and recycling challenges
as Africa Sustainability and Advocacy Manager for the company’s Packaging and
Specialty Plastics business.
“The primary challenge in Africa, when it comes to circularity and
sustainability, is that these concepts can be very abstract,” Adwoa told
Sustainable Brands™. “A significant number of people in African
countries live way below the poverty line — so, these topics are not top of
mind. Instead, people are thinking about where clean
water
is going to come from, if they have shelter, what they can do to create a
livelihood for themselves and their families.”
Many people in Africa do recycle to support their livelihoods, however. Millions
of waste
pickers
make a living by collecting recyclable materials that can be reused or recycled.
In the developed world, government-regulated waste-management companies
generally do this work — collecting waste outside homes on certain days of the
week. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only around 50 percent of waste is dealt with in a
similar fashion. In places such as Ghana and Ethiopia, informal waste
sector
workers
are critical for managing waste in the region.
Coleman’s role involves rallying Dow’s resources and working with African
entrepreneurs to harness their ingenuity and resilience to leapfrog the
inadequacies of the region’s waste-management infrastructure. Partnerships in
the area focus on integrating technology “without having to go through the
motions of some of the learnings that other developed economies are facing in
their circularity journey.”
An app to aid waste pickers
Logistics play a key role in determining the value of plastic waste materials.
For example, transporting the material just an extra 2-3 kilometres can require
enough fuel to override the value of the material for waste pickers.
In Kenya, Dow initiated a pilot to address logistical issues by leveraging
mobile systems and technologies. Dow’s IT team developed an app that helps
optimize the logistics for the pick-up and collection of recyclable materials
with technology similar to that of ride-sharing services. The company
trialled
the use of the app in Kenya with Mr. Green
Africa.
Kenya has served as a beacon in the fintech space for developing and leveraging
fintech for many years now, largely thanks to
M-Pesa
— a mobile banking system that bypasses the need for traditional banks and bank
cards, and allows people to trade and receive payment for waste.
“In Mr. Green’s current business model, registered waste pickers can come to a
trading point where they can sell their waste,” Coleman explains. “Once the
waste is weighed and inspected, they receive payment immediately through M-Pesa,
based on the quantity and the advertised price.”
The pilot with Dow unlocked an additional collection mechanism to enable
consumer participation through residential collections and pick up of
recyclables all controlled via an app: “It reduces the carbon footprint from
logistics, reduces time spent moving from place to place, and also optimizes the
collection frequency to ensure a significant amount of material has been
accumulated before the collector goes to get something, so it’s worth their
while,” she says.
Learning from others, leading by example
As policymakers and legislators around the world look to other nations for
inspiration on how to solve the circularity challenge, Coleman is keen to see
more African nations lead the way by exploring the benefits of extended producer responsibility
(EPR) — which puts the onus on the waste producer to pay for and deal with
waste collection and recycling. Applied in Africa, where governments often lack
resources to invest in waste infrastructure, EPR has the external funding
potential to implement solid waste-management systems that would enable a
circular economy.
“EPR could help to unlock [circularity] in a way that is meaningful to the local
context,” Coleman says. “It is not about doing a copy and paste. It is about
looking at what has been done, analyzing the gaps, and working out how to
implement EPR locally.”
How to solve a problem like flexible packaging
Unlocking the value of more waste streams is a crucial part of the circularity
puzzle.
In many African countries, dealing with the ubiquitous flexible packaging — used
widely for thin, sealed plastic bags or sachets that package everything from
soap and water to washing powder — remains complex. Yet, compared to PET
bottles, this kind of flexible packaging is not an attractive waste to collect,
since it can clog up machines and there is little demand for it at end of life.
Coleman and her team have led a project to specifically tackle this issue. In
partnership with Omnik, Wecyclers and the Lagos Business School
Sustainability Centre, Dow’s Project
ReflexNG
pilot in Nigeria was designed to convert 300 million sachet water pouches, which
otherwise would have ended up in the environment or landfill, into the raw
ingredients for new products.
“We realized that in order to bring flexibles back, we had to put value on
it.
We had to make people realize that by throwing these used sachets away, they are
essentially throwing away money.”
It worked; and the material — 100 million sachets to date — started coming back
to Dow and Omnik, a converter in Nigeria, which dedicated a line in its facility
to further develop post-consumer recycled (PCR) resin capabilities. As a result,
the PCR quality is improved, so it can be utilized for new products. For
instance, Dow is working with a large brand that has committed to ensure that
its detergent sachets are made using 30 percent recycled plastic.
“They are happy with the results and will commercialize things soon,” Coleman
says. Project Reflex has now been
extended
to cover Egypt and Guinea, as well.
The transition to a circular economy is a complicated challenge that
governments, communities and businesses all over the world are struggling to
solve. But as Dow’s work in Africa proves, solutions exist — and the best
results come about when organizations and communities seek inspiration from each
other and collaborate to create change rooted in local context.
Published Aug 31, 2022 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST
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