[caption id="attachment_16037" align="alignleft" width="240"] A section of Mombasa Road flooded due to blocked drainages after heavy rains. Most of polythene bags issued after shopping end up blocking drainages in Kenyan towns.[/caption]

Shopping in Kenya can leave you worried, and even leave you as an invalid due to worry, if you are an environmentally conscious shopper. Simply walk into any supermarket, and pick a few products, say a few bars of soap and some snacks. Your shopping basket will outdo a rainbow due to how colourful it will be, with almost every items wrapped in colourful polythene.

At the counter, it gets worse, a few women and men check out the items. They put them in another “paper” bag. They even separate the soap from the snacks, and put the soap in a smaller “paper” bag, and the milk in an even smaller “paper” bag, before putting them in one polythene bag.

Try stopping them, and you will spot the confusion in their faces, as they wonder why you do not need an extra polythene bag. “Paper bag ni bure”, they will tell you. Let's look at this "bure" (free) concept. The small clear paper bags that they put your onions and tomatoes in separately, cost Ksh. 45 for 200 pieces, about 23 cents per bag, easily covered by the markup of one Ksh. 5. onion. The black paper bags that you get free at the kiosk to carry your Ksh. 45 load and Ksh. 40 milk cost Ksh. 65 for 50 pieces, Ksh 1.3 for each.

A few years ago, you had to beg, almost on your knees for a supermarket to put one item in those paper bags. One item was not enough to warrant a “paper bag”. Those were the good old days, nowadays, even walking in and out a supermarket will get a you a polythene bag. After all they are so cheap.

Our houses are full of paper bags. Millions of Kenyans throw out all this “paper bags” with their rubbish, or just throw them out through matatu windows. Asking a Kenyan why they just threw rubbish out of a moving vehicle will see them stare back, surprised and amused.

Estates are colourfully dotted with biscuit wrappers, clear polythene bags, black polythene bags, bread wrappers, fast food wrappers, beer cans and lots of plastics.

Expansive pieces of land are now littered to the horizon with polythene bags, with their fences distinguishable by the polythene that stuck on them. They say it is the work of the wind, blowing all that rubbish there.

Failing Councils

It is the work of the councils to collect the rubbish. The councils have however abdicated their duty, and let the paper bags collect in the streets. The ill timed rain floods our streets, but it is too lazy to wash the bags out through the drainage, to the rivers and into the ocean. Kenya would then join the Atlantic Ocean in having it’s own floating islands, of garbage.

Instead, the unnecessary rain clogs up drains with garbage, then goes ahead to flood and make roads impassable, damage the same roads and even damage businesses and houses due to flooding.

A ban on polythene bags has been thought through before. The massive impact it had on a few wealthy Kenyans who own the factories was found to be detrimental to the nation. The polythene industry is a major employer of Kenyans. A number of them remain locked up in wahindi owned industries, toiling through the night, to satisfy our quest for paper bags.

The polythene bags also contribute a lot to our economy, after all, wasn't the taxation of such items almost doubled some years ago as a means to discourage their use?

Unlike Rwanda, Kenya does not strive to gain much from banning of such.

Take a case of Singapore, which banned chewing gum.

Singapore banned chewing gum in 1992, with the earliest proposal to ban chewing gum being in 1983. In 1983, the Environment Minister said chewing gum stuck in mailboxes, keyholes, lift buttons and on floors was causing lots of maintenance headaches and high cleaning costs.

Singapore later commissioned a Mass Rapid Transit (for strange reasons, they didn't call it a super railway) railway system, where chewing gum was stuck on the payment systems, often causing losses and delays. The government had it enough with chewing gum and banned it.

The matter was of such International importance that alongside the US war on Iraq, it was the only other matter that George W. Bush Junior could not agree with Singapore Prime Minister Chok Tong Goh during a 2003 state visit.

Following pressure from the US, Singapore now allows medicinal chewing gum imports and sale (no manufacturing yet), though they can only be sold in pharmacies and chemists . In addition, names of those who purchase the chewing gum must be taken down.

Polythene bag manufacturers and businesses that use them should take a proactive role in ensuring proper disposal of paper bags. Currently, businesses consider their business done once they sell an item to the buyer. Whichever way the buyer disposes the waste is none of their concern. End users tend to be ignorant of the harm they cause through such disposal.

The threat of having these replaced by real paper bags isn't far off. Actual paper bags mean that thousands of acres of trees will be planted to cater for the demand, which is good for the environment.