A few hours after Clean Up Kenya, Wildlight and Changing Markets Foundation released a damning report and documentary on the exportation of waste plastic clothing to Kenya, over two hundred media outlets from across the world have reported on this news. The report documents how millions of rubbish plastic clothing from the European Union and the United Kingdom are being exported to Kenya disguised as second-hand clothing in direct contravention of international law.
Early morning on release day, Clean Up Kenya Founder and Patron, Betterman Simidi Musasia was busy collaborating findings of the report to the world’s media, including to media agency AFP France and El Pais of Spain, among others. The East African, NTV Kenya, Kenyans.co.ke from Kenya are some of the outlets that have already published the story with more expected since Clean Up Kenya hosted several media houses for a press conference in Nakuru City, Kenya on release day. There has even been an article published by Deutsche Welle (DW) in Swahili.
Betterman’s reaction to this media interest to colleagues has been, “Clean Up Kenya advocacy work is now coming out of obscurity. These are the issues we have been raising over the years. Now the attention of the world must focus on the environmental crimes being perpetuated in poor countries by corporations in the Global North with the help of governments who simply look away.”
Some of the media houses that were early to report on the story were Switzerland’s biggest newspaper Le Temps.
This is a developing story.
You can follow a live list of all media stories of this report here as they come in.
You can access the report and documentary here
ABOUT CLEAN UP KENYA
Clean Up Kenya was established in 2015 to advocate for and promote sustainable public sanitation in Kenya. Since then we have become the de-facto national public sanitation advocacy brand. We are also experts in community mobilizing for cleanups. We have done numerous cleanups over the years, some of which have been attended by over 1000 volunteers on singular sites. These cleanups are meant to increase visibility on the problem of waste and it is therefore common to see our volunteers in bibs with one message, ‘Clean Up Kenya’. At the core of our work is honest and actual engagement in communities – not PR events. We also run advocacy campaigns holding duty bodies, consumer brands, green-washing NGOs, and other stakeholders to account for unsustainable public sanitation in Kenya and the global South. We receive no funding for our work but collaborate with others on projects.
