FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 28, 2023
Contact: Robin Ingenthron, Founder World Reuse Repair and Recycling Association [WR3A] robin @ fairtraderecycling.net 8O2 -377- 9166
Groundbreaking Report Unveils Critical Insights into Costs of Plastic Litter Collection Offsets in Africa: Key Findings Revealed
[MIDDLEBURY, VT] - Fair Trade Recycling, an export reform conservation group dedicated to partnerships in Emerging Markets to safeguard the planet's natural resources, is delighted to announce the release of a comprehensive report on a Two Year Pilot Project to test least expensive plastic litter collection in Cameroon, Africa. The report, titled "Reducing Plastic Litter in African Cities: Cost-Effective Methods and Potential for Recycling Offsets," presents groundbreaking discoveries based on a partnership between University of Yaounde’s new NGO Enprosa Action, WR3A (dba Fair Trade Recycling) and Good Point Recycling of Middlebury VT and Brockton, MA."We hope to make this effort ongoing, a win-win-win, for the environment, African jobs, and the plastic industry.,” said the lead researcher, Dr. Asi Quiggle Atud of Universite de Yaounde, Cameroon.
Authored by intern and translator Meline Marguet of Universite de Tours - IAE and edited by WR3A founder and president Robin Ingenthron, the report documents the incredible success of Dr. Asi Quiggle, Cameroun, in his investigation of the most cost effective method of plastic litter collection in Africa's ocean-facing cities.
According to Dr. Asi’s associate, Edith Mouafo, “to improve the environment it would be important to act on 3 axes: Improve waste collection methods in Africa, Raise awareness among populations on the importance of sorting waste at household level… and finally promote the development of industries for recycling these materials, their reuse and their energy recovery in other sectors of activity.”aa
According to Ingenthron, "I met Dr. Asi Quigle Atud 35 plus years after I had said goodbye to him - he was 5 years old - at my Peace Corps post in remote Ngaoundal, Cameroon - his father was my landlord and we shared a compound. When we reunited on Facebook, he was a month from being awarded his Ph.D in Urban Wastewater Management. " Ingenthron says that "on a lark" he raised $1500 (donation from Good Point Recycling and individuals via a GoFundMe campaign), and wired it to Dr. Asi Quiggle in Cameroon to come up with the cheapest way possible of diverting plastic litter BEFORE it washes to the sea and back on to the beaches.
Here are the members of the team who participated in the collection of plastic waste in Yaounde, Douala and Limbe during the period May-June-July 2023.
Dr. Asi and his team of students from U of Yaounde first published a 41 page report titled titled "Prospects for Recycling Offsets in Douala and Limbe" which documented how plastic litter discarded on city streets in urban centers is washed by annual stormwater runoff every rainy season, and predicted the time that plastic bottles would arrive in "bottlenecks" and choke points in city canals and gutters where Dr. Asi predicted the plastic would "collect itself" before more rain eventually washed it to sea.
According to Ingenthron "We were already astounded that a mere $1500 donation with no strings attached led to such an incredibly detailed report. Imagine our shock when Dr. Asi's team actually took the next steps the following year and demonstrated the cost effectiveness - by actually collecting the plastic bottles and delivering them to a recycler in three separate cities!"
Dr. Asi and the team established Environmental Protection and Sanitation Action (Enprosa Action) in an effort to actually capitalize on the opportunity to demonstrate the pilot project. The report being released this weekend shows the number of hours his team needed to collect several tons of plastic litter in three Cameroon cities - the capital Yaounde, the port city of Douala, and the anglophone beach city of Limbe.
In the first example, Yaounde, Dr. Asi and the Enprosa Action team spent 15 days focused on 8 different “litter concentrations” in urban water canals around the capital. The collections averaged 7 members per team, 4.3 hours per site, and collected in all 4.24 tons of plastic in a total of 7,748 labor hours. At Cameroon’s minimum wage, that would have cost $2,866 dollars.
Middlebury, VT based WR3A (an NGO funded primarily by Good Point Recycling) describes the potential for these plastic collections to be auctioned as “offsets”. Like carbon trading programs introduced in Europe two decades ago, the credits for the litter collection can potentially be auctioned to plastic industry giants, scrap plastic exporters, beverage industry giants, or even small recyclers like Good Point. Even cities whose recycling rates have stalled might choose to fund collections overseas rather than spend millions on diminishing returns to collect more plastic in their curbside programs.
Wilfred Mbah, a native of Limbe, Cameroun, former MA DEP Recycling staffer, is providing a peer review for the study. Mbah has just retired from DEP to accept a full scholarship at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and is providing advice and peer review for the study.“Dr. Asi may have invented a way to do that - and less expensively than sending westerners with nets to fish it out of the ocean.”
The group is sober about the potential for misuse, exaggeration, double counting, and “greenwashing” which has at times plagued voluntary carbon “offset” programs. In the coming months, Meline Marguet’s fellow intern from the University of Vermont, Nick Carney, will experiment with NFT’s and blockchain tracking methods to possibly address fraud or multiple claims of the same plastic diversion. But the potential for a dollar spent on “low hanging fruit” in a high employment ocean facing city to make a bigger difference than an additional dollar spent to collect litter in a western “silo of guilt” (like Vermont) is intriguing to the volunteers and sponsors of this project.
Dr. Asi concluded, “To reduce the rate of plastic waste, in our environment and especially in the sea, will require investment to industrialise plastic recycling in Africa. It is also important to sensitize the population on basic management of plastic waste and to involve all actors of economic circle to join their effort.””
Ingenthron and Dr. Asi are also conscious of the job opportunities litter offset might create. Cameroon’s official monthly minimum wage translates to $.037 per hour. Rather than “exploit” that inexpensive labor (a trope common among anti-export groups), Cameroon can employ an army of willing workers to collect and recycle its own litter. If the plastic can be re-sold for $0.35 per kg in baled form, the cost of “offsetting” could be even lower.
For a full copy of the report, visit fairtraderecycling.org.gg
