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Kenya: Turning Waste to Wealth – in Nairobi, UN Deputy Chief Lauds Youth-Led Development Solutions

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4 years ago

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Kenya’s Nzambi Matee beams brightly, thrusting a brick forth to coincide with the click of the camera. It is no ordinary brick – the entire thing is made from plastic waste – and no ordinary photo, either. Behind her, stands the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed. Ms. Mohammed rests her hands on Nzambi’s shoulder, undoubtedly proud of her. Around her are a dozen other young environmental advocates.

We’re ‘swamped by plastic’

“The challenge of plastic pollution affects us all. From the bottom of the seabed to the highest mountains, our world is swamped by harmful plastic,” noted Ms. Mohammed later, at the conclusion of the UN Environment Assembly session in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi on Wednesday.

“We all have a role to play in the solution,” she said.

Nzambi has, indeed, been playing her part.

On a normal day, she would have been spending her time surrounded by plastic waste, innovatively turning a would-be menacing problem into a sustainable solution. No soil. No kiln. Just plastic bottles, collected from households allover Nairobi, and turned into beautiful, sturdy paving and building blocks.

On Tuesday 1 March, she was one of more than a dozen young environmental advocates who met with the deputy UN chief on the margins of the Fifth UN Environment Assembly’s deliberations. Ms. Mohammed, who has taken keen interest in youth-led innovative solutions, earlier been to another youth-led initiative, Adopt a River for Sustainable Development (Adopt-a-River), whose goal to ease the global water crisis through focused activities on freshwater ecosystems at a local level.