Paradise lost: Is plastic threatening Africa's potential to tap into tourism?

Reuters

27-05-2025

May 27 - There are few sights more idyllic for an international tourist than a golden sandy beach, warmed by the African sun, with the gentle waves of tropical waters lapping on the shore.
Until, that is, the visitor turns their eyes to the piles of plastics and other waste that accumulate on the seafront and infest the seas, strangling marine life, spreading disease and spoiling the beauty of what should be a tropical paradise. Plastic waste is a global problem (and Africa consumes just 4% of the world's plastic). But Africa's leading tourist destinations are particularly hard hit by the waste crisis.
'The situation is far from good,' says Edita Magileviciute, project coordinator at ECOCV, the Cabo Verdean Ecotourism Association. 'Despite the regular clean-ups and so on, plastic keeps on coming back.'
Cabo Verde, an Atlantic Ocean archipelago, is one of the most tourism-dependent countries in Africa. Some of its plastic waste comes from domestic sources – with plastic trash often dumped in riverbeds then washed onto beachfronts – but its beaches are also plagued with plastic that originates on the African mainland or even further afield.
Tourism itself is a major driver of plastic pollution, and tourists have a particularly acute impact on African islands that are popular with tourists, including Cabo Verde, as well as Mauritius and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. These islands, with their small populations, struggle to reach the economies of scale needed to fund modern waste processing infrastructure and cannot easily send waste overseas to be recycled.
'A huge amount of the plastic waste generated comes from tourism,' says Willemijn Peeters, CEO of Searious Business, a company working on initiatives to prevent plastic pollution. Tourists are responsible for a disproportionate share of the plastic waste that ends up in the oceans, especially when they bring suitcases filled with disposable items to coastal locations with little recycling infrastructure.
In tackling plastic waste, a good place for African tourist operators to start is plastic bottles. These are ubiquitous at hotels and resorts around the continent, given that tourists are advised that tap water is unsafe to drink in most African countries.
Peeters insists this problem is solvable. 'One of the really good solutions we've seen is having big water tanks of drinking water at the hotel,' she says. Guests still receive drinking water taken from these tanks in plastic bottles – but the bottles are designed to be returned and refilled. 'It's actually cheaper for the hotel as well, instead of buying all those single use plastic bottles.'
Persuading hotels to embrace efforts to tackle plastic waste can, however, be complicated. 'If you talk to hotel managers individually, they're all very much aware of the issue, and they're interested in taking measures. What they're not very much keen on is moving by themselves,' says Peeters. The key to progress, she argues, is to develop collaborative initiatives.
'We've seen that a joint approach is much more effective. So, we typically work together with governments, with tourism associations, with hotel organisations,' she says. 'This is not something one company or one hotel can solve. We really need concerted action.'
Meanwhile, there are several examples across Africa of players from the tourist sector working collaboratively.
In Zanzibar, the TUI Care Foundation – a charity established by tour operator TUI – has launched a 'Destination Zero Waste' initiative alongside Chako, a local social enterprise.
Anna-Lena Strehl, head of external affairs at the TUI Care Foundation, tells The Ethical Corporation that the programme aims to collect 12,000kg of plastic waste. Much of this waste is being recycled or upcycled by local partners. Some of the upcycled plastic is turned into souvenirs and accessories that are sold to tourists, creating a 'positive ripple effect' for the Zanzibari economy.
In Cabo Verde, ECOCV is attempting a somewhat similar approach, having established an 'Ecocentre' on the island of Santiago. Here, some types of glass and plastic (though not PET, which is used in most plastic bottles) can be recycled and refashioned into items such as furniture. But Magileviciute reports that persuading hotels to participate in these kinds of recycling schemes is far from easy.
'Awareness is still quite low,' she says. ECOCV approached several hotels and offered to recycle some of their plastic waste for free, if the hotels could separate their waste and take it to the Ecocentre.
'Even that, for them, was too expensive,' she laments. 'They wanted us to go there to separate and collect. It's not really fair that we are recycling this waste that belongs to everybody,' says Magileviciute, who believes hotels that import plastic items should pay a levy.
Another solution would be to require hotels to help fund regular beach clean-ups that would employ local people. Action needs to accelerate, she warns, as the constant flow of plastic waste threatens to inundate beaches in some parts of the archipelago, while plastic in some of the less-visited islands is hampering efforts to develop tourism. 'If I'm going on a trail, and I'm finding bottles and plastic bags and so on, really it kind of kills the enjoyment.'
While Cabo Verde faces a struggle to protect its lucrative tourist industry from plastic, many other parts of the continent are still looking to grow international tourism, almost from scratch.
In Sierra Leone, for example, a once-promising tourism sector was destroyed by civil war in the 1990s. The government is now looking to revive tourism as a way of diversifying its economy.
'We know that beach tourism is our primary asset,' says Mary Jallow, project coordinator of the government's World Bank-funded Sierra Leone Economic Diversification Project (SLEDP). Her team, however, identified plastic pollution as a key risk to the sector. In particular, Jallow says, huge amounts of single-use plastic water sachets are found discarded at beaches, reflecting a severe lack of proper waste disposal and recycling.
Tackling this problem is vital if Sierra Leone is to unlock its obvious tourism potential. The country's beautiful beaches and abundant nature could be reached with a flight time of less than six hours from most of Europe. The West African nation also offers near-guaranteed sunshine during much of the European winter.
The SLEDP team is now pushing a holistic approach to dealing with plastic waste, as it seeks to deal with a key threat to the country's tourism credentials. 'Our focus is to transform waste into wealth,' says Jallow. Hospitality businesses are being encouraged to join an early adopters programme to reduce plastics and increase recycling, she says. But the SLEDP is also looking at various other upstream interventions.
'We focus on preventing plastic waste generation by promoting alternative and circular businesses,' says Jallow. Within the corridors of power, her team is working with the finance minister on a levy on plastics imports, as well as helping to guide the country's first ever legislation on plastic pollution. And Jallow adds that the SLEDP is seeking to increase incentives for circular businesses, such as those that can collect and recycle plastics.
Tourist arrivals have now returned to pre-civil war levels. 'We still have a long way to go,' says Jallow. 'But what we have done is instilled in the minds of Sierra Leoneans and businesses within the circular economy and the hospitality sector, that (plastic pollution) is a major issue to your livelihoods, to the environment, and we must control it.'
This article is part of The Ethical Corporation's in-depth briefing on Sustainable Tourism. To download the PDF,click here