Innovative young Kenyan scientist is turning Nairobi's mountain of plastic waste into paving bric…

[Music] this morning our series i on earth travels to africa to learn about a creative approach to plastic pollution that's showing up all around the world it's called the great pacific garbage patch i like that in the pacific ocean contains plastic waste twice the size of texas that's big kenya is one of the many countries contributing to the pollution hundreds of tons of plastic waste are created every day in the capital nairobi alone that's where deborah patter met one young woman who's finding innovative ways to tackle the problem this is dundora about 30 acres of waste that's the equivalent of 22 football fields despite a pioneering plastic ban kenya is still drowning in it and whilst most people look at this and think it's an insurmountable plastic mountain one young woman saw a way to move that mountain there are days in kenya when you can actually walk on water this river is choking with so much plastic it's formed an unsinkable foundation a disturbing health hazard for everyone living here except this young woman so i get i get excited when i see waste because i know that's that's that's life for us the fact that plastic does not sink is precisely what intrigued material scientist in zambia matia i came across this concept of using plastic to building box in 2017 kenya outlawed single-use plastic bags but it's still everywhere clogging drains polluting rivers contaminating animal feed some of it ends up here in nairobi's dundora landfill which long reached its capacity and was supposed to be closed down 20 years ago but every day waste pickers trudge through the rancid trash sifting for plastic plastic that matia had to figure out how to turn into bricks when you made your first brick how was that that was the best day it took us about nine months just to make one break but one break wasn't enough no problem for a woman who likes to get her hands pretty much everything else dirty so she built a machine to mass produce the plastic bricks first the waste is sorted to remove rubble and metals and then you're going to bake it exactly figure if you know how to make cookies this is just making cookies i could make a brick are you saying exactly the boiling mixture is molded into building blocks as many as 2 000 a day 35 cheaper than standard bricks and up to seven times stronger pretty impressive yep it doesn't break currently materials bricks are only used for pathways in small households but she wants to target big construction companies next compounding kenya's fight against plastic is that two years ago the u.s exported more than one billion pounds of plastic waste to 96 nations including kenya and now wants to make the shipment of plastic a condition of a proposed trade deal greenpeace activist amar suamanya believes kenya can barely manage its own waste let alone recycle americas it will be importing more problems if you are to allow this u.s kenya trade deal to be used as a way of damping plastic west on the african continent methier agrees countries should keep their waste in their own backyards and she intends to make good on what she calls her triple threat the more we recycle the plastic the more we produced affordable housing problem the more we created more employment for the youth which means there's no time to get too comfortable for cbs this morning debra patter nairobi kenya her enthusiasm is infectious in zombie i like that you need that when you're tackling a problem that big incredible story no but i like how debra set it up this would look insurmountable but you go to in zombie who says you know she just gets excited when she sees ways and the difference that she's making if you know how to make cookies i don't know how to do that either

Channel: CBS Mornings

Views: 1,205,011

Keywords: video, cbs, news, innovation, kenya, scientist, nairobi, mountain, bricks, plastic waster, swimming, CBS this morning, ctm, cbs news, cbs morning show, gaye king

Id: LbXQPKDBT9A

Length: 4min 33sec (273 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021