If you’re planning to visit Victoria Falls on your safari, then I’d better be the first to tell you. It’s got a problem. It’s not political, and the waterfall is still magnificent, but the region is a victim of its own success and now produces an estimated 250 tons of plastic waste a month. Victoria Falls – whether it’s Zimbabwe or Zambia – has a litter problem.
Don’t worry, you don’t see it floating down the Zambezi River or strewn across the national parks; it won’t spoil your holiday. This is the waste left over from the hotels and shops and restaurants and it gets dumped out of sight, turning the parts of Victoria Falls that you don’t see into a horror show of seething trash.
As you might imagine, that the rubbish is picked over by hyenas and marabou storks, but unfortunately baboons and even elephants also go through the litter, indiscriminately consuming plastic which eventually causes plasticosis – debilitating stomach damage – making them stressed, more aggressive towards humans, and their eventual painful death.
But don’t cancel Victoria Falls just yet: you have the answer to the problem, and it’s lying in your pocket. Twenty US dollars. That’s it. Add twenty bucks to the cost of your safari and here’s what happens.
Your investment pays for the collection, baling and processing of waste plastic. The first half of it – ten dollars – secures an income for someone in a country where a third of the population live on less than a dollar a day. Fifty kilogrammes (110 pounds) of waste plastic (in any condition) is collected per $20 bundle – multiple bundles may be bought – and delivered to a processing centre. Now, as the second half of your investment is used, it gets interesting.
This is not trash that is sold on or dumped somewhere else. Recyclable clean plastics are separated and made into plastic flakes for industry, but the really horrible stuff gets turned into something brilliant: a lightweight building aggregate, like the gravel you mix with water and cement to make concrete. How satisfying to pour a new concrete floor of a safari lodge made from the very waste it created!
The organisation is called Ele-collection, run by local Victoria Falls residents and conservationists who were stung into action by the sight of plastic waste turning up in elephant dung. Committed to removing 350 tons of plastic waste a month from the Victoria Falls and Hwange National Park area, they have further collection and processing sites planned for the rest of the country. Incomes are earned, litter is picked up, and construction projects are begun.
The project is in its infancy, but like the elephants that it seeks to protect, from small things, big things come.
