WasteAid Warrior
Algarve resident, Zoë Lenkiewicz, is a waste warrior taking on the global plastic pollution challenge. Sophie Sadler reports on Zoë’s charity WasteAid, and her international efforts to bring about change from a grassroots level.
Zoë first became concerned about the issue of plastics while studying for a Masters Degree in Environment and Development in 2001. “I really wanted to do something at the time, but it just wasn't considered an issue;” she explains. “Now it has become a crisis and we don’t yet understand the impact it will have on the planet. Tiny particles of plastic are now being found in animals at all levels of the food chain, in the water we drink and even the air we breathe.”
She spent her career in waste management in the UK before teaming up with her colleague Mike Webster to set up the UK registered charity, WasteAid, which works at a community level in countries where there are no waste disposal systems in place.
Zoë tells me that many developing countries are too corrupt or poor to have waste management systems, and 90% of global marine plastic pollution is delivered by just 10 rivers in Asia and Africa.
We meet for a coffee overlooking Luz Bay where the community often comes together to pick up plastic from the beach but imagine a world where there was nowhere to put the rubbish we picked up.
When Zoe was in Gambia last year she saw her herself what happens when there is no capacity for recycling. She met a girl who sold cold drinks in small plastic pouches. After finishing her drink, the girl simply threw the plastic pouch onto the ground.
“I was a bit taken aback, but then I realised if there’s no waste management system - no bins or trucks or landfills - then people have no alternative than to dump their waste on common ground. What would you do?”
Zoë explains that an astonishing two billion people have never had their waste collected and three billion people’s waste isn’t properly managed, even if they have a simple collection system. In these cases, refuse ends up at informal dumps close to communities. These dump sites can be vast, and 38 of the 50 biggest dump sites in the world are located on or near the coast, spilling rubbish into the water on a daily basis.
WasteAid’s mission statement is to share recycling skills around the world and to help communities set up recycling and waste management businesses which generate an income, improve health and help the environment.
Zoë sums it up: “If you walked into your house and there was a flood, what would you do first? Bale out the water or turn off the tap? We are trying to turn off the tap.”
Zoë travels a lot with her work and has some wonderfully inspiring stories of people she has met which illustrate the strength of the human spirit and just how a small amount of investment can make huge changes. She tells me about Isatou Ceesay who she met at the Women's Initiative in the Gambia.
Isatou was so sick of seeing plastic bags littering the village in which she lived, being eaten by livestock and creating unsanitary conditions for the children, that one day she decided to go and collect them all. She wondered how she could turn them into something of value. As well as bags, she found lots of blue stretchy plastics and she wondered where they came from. She tracked them down to the airport, where they were used to wrap pallets. She requested she take them and along with the plastic bags, she weaves bags and purses. Zoë shows me one and it is such a beautiful item, you would never guess at its origin.
Another staggering story of entrepreneurship is Pierre Kamsouloum, who lived on a dumpsite in Cameroon scavenging for valuable items to sell in exchange for food. During his childhood Pierre melted plastic waste to make a football, and inspired by this is started to collect plastics and experiment. Everyone told him he was crazy but unperturbed he started melting LDPE, the plastic used in cheap plastic bags.
He discovered that when mixed with sand it creates a cement-like consistency, and so with a simple mould he began to make paving tiles. Pierre perfected his craft, and the tiles - each of which contains 200 plastic bags - are now approved by the Cameroonian government as a certified construction product. Pierre now runs his own business as well as working with WasteAid to share the process with other communities in need.
While lots of marine conservation organisations are trying to clean plastic waste from the sea and beaches, WasteAid is working to prevent the problem in the first place. “We are going further upstream to the source of the plastic, rather than picking up the rubbish at the mouth of the river,” Zoë tells me.
Zoë and her charity have received funding from the UK government, businesses and philanthropic trusts. They also run fundraising events through the year and welcome donations from the public. Zoë says: “It’s easy to feel helpless - you recycle your own waste but what can you do about the wider problem? In supporting WasteAid, you can help spread recycling skills around the world, making a really positive social and environmental impact.”
If what you have just read has inspired you to support WasteAid please donate by visiting their website, or if you just want to spread the word, Zoë is happy to visit community groups in the Algarve to discuss the issues.
If you care about this issue, supporting WasteAid seems a good way to make an instant difference.
wasteaid.org.uk
