Clean Up Kenya in partnership with Nairobi Recyclers has released a damning 2021 PET Rubbish Report which places The Coca-Cola Company at the center of the plastic waste pandemic in Kenya.
In this report from an audit of 12,288 plastic bottles waste from across Kenya, brands associated with The Coca-Cola Company account for 41.27 %. This percentage is extremely high, given that 428 brands were found in this audit.
In the bottled water category, Quencher Life, a product of Excel Chemicals was found to be the leading polluter with 12.27 %. However, The Coca-Cola Company water brands of Dasani (8.36 %) and Keringet (3%) ensures the company still leads in this category.
Among carbonated drinks of sodas, The Coca-Cola Company brands of Coca-Cola (25.07 %), Fanta Orange (18.02 %), Sprite (13.28 %), Fanta Black Currant (8.24%0, Fanta Passion (6.26%), and Krest (5.11 %) leads among the top six with Highlands Drinks Limited brands of Club Cola (3.85%) and Club Lemon Lime (3.56 %) coming in seventh and eighth respectively.
Among products marketed as ‘Energy Drinks’, Power Play (40.66%) and Predator (24.07%), associated locally with The Coca-Cola Company, also leads.
Finally in the non-carbonated category of drinks marketed as Juices, Minute Maid (37.29 %), also a product of The Coca-Cola Company is the biggest polluter in the country.
More critical findings from this audit will be released in the coming days with a final report available here. The statistical data will later be shared with relevant government agencies and released to the public for further analysis and debate.
Member of Parliament to request for a Ministerial Statement on plastic pollution in Kenya
Dagoretti South Member of Parliament, Hon. John Kiarie, popularly known as KJ, attended the launch of this report together with other leaders from civil society and the private sector. Among these were James Wakibia, a prominent activist against single-use plastics in Kenya. Mr. Wakibia read a statement condemning corporations including The Coca-Cola Company for passing the blame of plastic pollution to consumers.
Hon. John Kiarie, in his remarks, narrated how he had been ‘schooled’ by Betterman Simidi Musasia, Clean Up Kenya Founder and Patron over a period of two years on the issue of plastic pollution over WhatsApp, underlying the Founder’s tireless work to bring to the limelight this issue. He declared that he had now converted and would use the instruments available to him to bring this matter to the attention of Parliament.
Two critical areas that he will be requesting a parliamentary statement to the relevant Cabinet Secretaries are the issues of rampant child labor in recycling in the country and corporate slave labor by those concerned who profiteer from the work of Kenya’s waste pickers by receiving billions of shillings in subsidies from Kenya Association of Manufacturers and PETCO Kenya and only giving waste pickers less that 5 Kenya Shillings per kilo of PET waste collected. Clean Up Kenya and Nairobi Recyclers will be working with the Member of Parliament to prepare this request for the statement.
Learn more about the 2021 PET Rubbish Report 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.
