EPA-SL Holds Pre-INC5 Consultation Workshop on Plastic Pollution

By: Abdulai Fofanah
The Environment Protection Agency (EPA-SL) on Thursday 31st October, 2024, held a pre-Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (Pre-INC5) Workshop on plastic pollution at the New Brookfields Hotel.

The Deputy Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Hon. Mimi Yema Nima Sobba-Stephens, noted that plastic pollution is one of the most pressing global environmental challenges. She said this issue poses multifaceted stretches with far reaching impact on biodiversity, human health, and the national economy.

She stated that plastic pollution does not only represent environmental hazards, but also a crisis with compounding effects that excel across generations.

She noted that plastic pollution require urgent and comprehensive action to mitigate its potential harm, to hold ecosystems and human health.
Recognizing these harms, she said her Ministry has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to addressing plastic pollution and its associated risks by formulating a national plastic policy which is to regulate unsafe plastic use and responsible waste management practices.

She said that it is imperative that all stakeholders, including plastic manufacturers, consumers, and government agencies come together to strategize effective measures to control the use and mitigate the impact of plastic.

The Director for Natural Resources Governance – EPA-SL, Paul A. Lamin said the INC5, which is the 5th session committee on the global plastic treaty, is coming up in November this year. He noted that the pre-INCP5 National Consultation Workshop was about the menace of plastic pollution issues affecting the globe.
To address this, he said the United Nations has commissioned a Committee to discuss how to address plastic pollution including in the marine environment, and he expressed the United Nations effort to organize this session so that expert, academics, politicians, NGOs, Civil Society and Activist would come together and deliberate what could be the best way to address plastic pollution.

“We cannot address the plastic problem just at a country level; it has to be a global issue because it is a global concern. You cannot be polluting in your country, and others are polluting as all end up washing in your shores – maybe destroying your biodiversity in your marine environment,” he said, noting that the plastic related problems are not only affecting Sierra Leone; it is affecting the globe as well.

“We all know that like Sierra Leone, we are mostly consumers of plastic products; we are not producing the primary product of plastics, so what we see like the plastic bottles, these are secondary products because the prosuct is coming from somewhere and we just use it for our own amenities or whatever uses we want to put into use.”

Lamine stated that as a nation, they would join other developed countries, plastic producing countries, to look at how they can address plastic related issues at the INC5 on the global plastic treaty 5th session this November.

The Director of Next Chance Innovative Hub in Makeni, Alimamy Sarafila Marah, said that the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is an issue that they are very concerned about because as a recycler, their biggest constraint is collection of waste plastics. The next chance Innovative Hub is a plastic recycling company that is based in Makeni. “If you want to recycle raw materials, it is plastic waste, so collection is a very big issues for us, and so if we have a system wherein producers take responsibilities for their action, it would be easy for us as recyclers to be able to bring to us the raw materials and transform them into district product fermentation / formulation,” Marah noted.

He said that plastic recycling is a very expensive business because traditionally, the recyclers in Sierra Leone use the manual type of recycling, wherein you have an open drum system and use fire woods, stating that but for them in Makeni, they have moved beyond that. “We are using electricity and machines to do our recycling and to get those machines is very expensive,” he said. He said because of that they are looking forward to the government and other partners to come in to support local recyclers, so that they could improve on their methods of recycling because “you cannot boast of cleaning your environment and you are also polluting it by your recycling methods.”

“We are looking forward to having more recycling facilities and that we are able to reduce our footprints in terms of carbon emission,” he said, while mentioning that for them in Makeni, they have moved beyond dialects and have gone into furniture producing things like kickboards, benches and some other furniture.