Overview of the project

The problems with plastic waste in African cities are increasing to alarming levels. Especially disposable packaging made of very light plastic materials continues to burden the environment as well as compromise management capacities for waste management by city authorities. In light of this, major cities and especially those in Kenya have in the last two decades registered participation of formal and informal private actors whose strategies curtail the flow of plastic waste to the environment. It is our argument that such strategies which we refer to as ‘environmental innovations’ have the potential to transform the plastic waste scenario in Kenya and any other African cities where they occur. The ability of such initiatives to foster an integrative regime between solid waste management and plastic production systems for plastic waste management will therefore be the breakthrough in ensuring sustainability in this case. Strategic niche management and Multi-level perspective on socio-technical transitions that bases the success of an innovation on its actor networks, convergence of expectations and learning processes will be useful in the analysis of performance of activities of the non-state actors. In-depth case studies of the non-state actors activities in plastic waste management and plastic waste recycling will illustrate how and to what extent such initiatives referred to here as innovations are able to transform the stultifying environmental condition and further become the foundation for developing an integrated regime for plastic waste management.