The National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) of Kenya announced on 31 January that it was cracking down on 29 companies it accuses of being responsible for waste accumulation in the country’s rivers.
Inspections had been carried out by NEMA on 18 January at the Nairobi River.
The 29 companies include Unilever Kenya Limited, Kapa Oil Refineries Limited, Weetabix East Africa Limited, Mars Wrigley Confectionary Kenya Limited, and others.
NEMA states that the waste that “had accumulated in the rivers interfering with their flow, posed a potential threat of flooding, water pollution and are likely to have adverse environmental effects on the general environment”.
NEMA also refers to Kenyans’ constitutional right “to a clean and a healthy environment”, as per Article 42 of the Constitution of Kenya.
According to Section 13(1) of Kenya’s Sustainable Waste Management Act 2022, “Every producer shall bear extended producer responsibility obligations to reduce pollution and environmental impacts of the products they introduce into the Kenyan market and waste arising therefrom”.
Section 13(1) is a form of ‘Extended Producer Responsibility’, which is defined by the OECD as “an environmental policy approach in which a producer’s responsibility for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of a product’s life cycle.” By introducing Extended Producer Responsibility, Kenya is departing from its previous framework, where the public bore sole responsibility for littering.
The Sustainable Waste Management Act also provides for a clean-up requirement when someone subject to the Act is found to be in breach.
The notice sent to the 29 companies involved includes requirements to “clean up the wastes within the specific sites where the crime was committed to their natural state” and to submit an Extended Producer Plan to NEMA detailing how the companies will better manage the waste resulting from their products and packaging.
If the 29 companies who received notice from the NEMA do not comply with the notice within a 30-day timeframe, they can be penalised. Penalties include fines between 2 and 4 million shillings (£9755 - £19510) or imprisonment.
According to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, which funded a team of (legal) consultants to draft Kenya’s Sustainable Waste Management Act, “[s]ustainable waste management is vital in Kenya, whose capital of Nairobi is home to one of the world’s largest open dumpsites […] [which] creates hazardous conditions for the thousands of people that live next to the dump and dangerous working conditions for the thousands of waste pickers tasked with informally managing it.”
Discussing the implementation of the Sustainable Waste Management Act, Chris Kiptoo, Kenya’s Principal Secretary for the Ministry of Environment and Forestry told The Standard: “We are moving away from a linear approach to a circular one.”
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