Our Work
Community beach clean ups and Bahari Moja center
Over the past 6 years, with the help of community members and conservancy rangers, over 50 tonnes of plastic has been removed form turtle nesting beaches and the marine ecosystem. The collected plastic is then organized in our sorting and processing facility in Mkokoni village where it is separated into categories for efficient recycling. So far we have successfully reclaimed 12 tonnes of plastic which have been used in the construction of Eco-bricks, and a further 8 tonnes of HDPE, PP, PET and fishing gear has been sold for recycling at Flipflopi in Lamu, while women continue to make their arts and crafts out of recycled flip flops.
Eco-bricks are an affective building material made from plastic waste that is otherwise difficult to process and recycle. Collected plastic bottles are manually compacted with crushed hard plastics, micro-plastics, sacks, polythene bags and so on, making them a great way to reuse plastic waste. Within the past three years, 200 women from the community have helped to make 9,265 eco bricks which were then sold to Bahari Moja and used in the construction of a workshop, a plastic shredder house and a recycling sorting center. Eco-bricks help to support the livelihoods of women in the community while creating a solution to marine plastic pollution.
1/ Collecting marine litter and plastic waste from marine ecosystem and villages.
2/ Creating awareness among local communities, children in schools and the tourist/hospitality industry on marine litter, waste management and the impact of plastic on public health.
3/ Sorting and up-cycling/recycling of collected plastic.
4/ Establishing contacts with markets for plastic recycling.
5/ Strengthening of women’s enterprise initiatives based on plastic recycling.
6/ Reinforcing an integrated waste management system for the village, and beyond.
Moving Forward
Bahari Moja developed a model for integrated waste management and recycling in 2019 with the objective of setting an example and offering solutions to dealing with community waste and marine litter.
Since then, multiple centers have been established in other communities within the Lamu archipelago.
Six years of coastal clean ups has resulted in a simple but robust data system which tracks the tonnage of marine litter washing up on turtle nesting beaches in Kiunga Marine National Reserve. In order to continue to monitor and fully understand our impact as well as the amount of plastic arriving on our shores and the rate in which it returns after cleaning we need to ensure this project can survive into the future. All marine litter collected at Bahari Moja is carried to our coastline by Indian Ocean Oceanic movements such as currents, monsoons and tides. This means that Bahari Moja is the only organization in the area attempting to monitor the deposition of marine litter. Through data and long-term monitoring we hope gain a larger understanding of the movement of plastic within these systems and the scale of the issue we face.
Meanwhile the Bahari Moja, Mkokoni center continues to advance solutions, including the sourcing of a solar powered plastic shredder, allowing us to maximize on the value of transported materials. With more than half of what is collected from the marine environment still not recyclable, we are constantly searching for new innovative solutions to marine plastic pollution.