By Wallace Mawire/Zimbabwe,Harare,
Zimbabwe is advancing to implement initiatives under the circular and Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS) free plastics in Africa project which is also being undertaken in five other regional countries.
Environmental Management Agency (EMA) Acting Deputy Director Angela Kabira represented Simon Masanga Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Wildlife at a validation workshop for the National Communication Plan and Implementation Strategy under the project “Secular and Pops-free Plastics in Africa: A Five-Year Mission”.
The projects that aims to reduce the import, production, and use of persistent organic pollutants, particularly known as POPs, in plastic products, as well as to reduce their unintentional release. Kabira said Zimbabwe is proud to be an executing agency, together with the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for the Africa Region, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Resources and Markets Branch, and sister countries namely Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Uganda.
Kabira said initiative, ladies and gentlemen advances Zimbabwe’s National Development Strategy 2, NDS 2, and the overarching Vision 2030 goals of transforming the country into an empowered, upper-middle-income society through green infrastructure, industrialization, and sustainable environmental management. She said by focusing on freezing out hazardous ports and promoting closed-loop recycling, across sectors like electronics, construction and the automotive industry, the project reinforces NDS2’s core emphasis on sustainable manufacturing. “Furthermore, eliminating toxic additives from plastic life cycles enables safer resource recovery, unlocking economic opportunities through waste-to-wealth initiatives, protecting public health and safeguarding crucial ecosystems,” Kabira said.
She added that aligning regional secular economy interventions in Zimbabwe’s national policy frameworks ensures that economic growth under Vision 2030 remains clean, climate resilient and socially inclusive.
Kabira said POPs are persistent, toxic chemicals that bioaccumulate in living organisms and contaminate soils, water and food chains.
She said without proper management and end-of-life traceability, recycling or disposal of POPs containing plastics simply redistributes the hazards across ecosystems.
The workshop sought to strengthen information sharing on POPs and chat how stakeholders across sectors can collaborate on developing lasting solutions. Kabira said the initiative falls under the fourth component of the project on knowledge management, capacity building and communication. She added that the development, validation and subsequent implementation of an information and communication strategy is pivotal in the quest to disseminate information on POPs in plastics.
Communication and implementation strategy is being validated to help raise awareness about POPs and their risks, share clear and useful information with all stakeholders and build capacity to apply secular economic practices that reduce pollution from plastic-containing POPs. Kabira said the strategy must speak to the stakeholders across the construction sectors, manufacturers, importers, recyclers, waste collectors, policy makers, schools and communities. She said Inter-sectoral collaboration in the development and implementation of the strategy will go a long way in fulfilling the whole-of-government participatory approach to sustainable programming.
The UNEP and BCCC Nigeria provided technical and financial support for the initiative.
