‘It is ambitious, but ambition builds the world’: can the Gambia’s bold plan to cut plastic pollution work?

Tourists flock to the country’s dazzling beaches, but its vast, smoking waste sites tell a different story – one that the government is keen to change

Travelling through the Gambia, it is hard to avoid the makeshift dumpsites burning along the roadsides, filling the air with toxic fumes. Outside the tourist areas, beaches and waterways are littered with plastic rubbish.

The Gambia has long acknowledged it has a problem with plastic. For nearly a decade, it has attempted to solve it through legislation, including an anti-littering law in 2007 and a ban on plastic bags in 2015.

Now, despite the failure of international plans to cut plastics pollution, the Gambia is redoubling its efforts. In October, the country released a bold roadmap to eliminate plastic over the next decade. The National Action Plan – a strategy designed with the UK organisation Common Seas – aims to target the entire lifecycle of plastics to reduce plastic waste by 86% through improvements to infrastructure, stricter enforcement of new and existing legislation, and by raising public awareness.

For many, implementation of the plan cannot come quickly enough. “Our water bodies, our rivers, our oceans are choking,” says Lamin Jassey, who has worked in environmental conservation for 15 years. “The amount of plastic we see daily is unacceptable.”

Jassey welcomes the action plan but is sceptical about yet another government measure he describes as “beautiful on paper”. “Gambia is just trying to impress the international world. The common man is not benefiting,” he says of steps taken so far.

When Ajie Fana is asked about the idea of a plastic-free Gambia, she throws back her head and laughs, as she pokes at a steaming rubbish dump in Bakoteh in Serekunda township, the largest landfill site in the Gambia. Fana is one of thousands who collect and sell plastic from landfill sites across the country.

“We will wait to see whether the authorities will create meaningful opportunities for income so we can leave this plastic waste collection,” she says, rifling through the rubbish she will sell to feed her family.

Globally, the UN Environment Programme estimates that every day the equivalent of 2,000 bin lorries full of plastic is dumped into the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes. Experts have warned that the world will be “unable to cope” with the volume of plastic waste in 10 years.

According to Common Seas, the Gambia – a country of just under 2.8 million people – generated nearly 23,000 tonnes of plastic waste in 2021. That figure is projected to rise by 42% over the next 10 years.

Each winter, thousands of tourists flock to the country’s white sandy beaches, yet three-quarters of its plastic waste ends up in the natural environment, according to Common Seas.

Key measures in the new plan include a phased ban on single-use plastic bottles, improved access to drinking water to reduce reliance on disposable water bags, and stricter enforcement of the plastic bag ban.

Dr Dawda Badgie, executive director of the Gambia’s National Environment Agency, sees the plan as an essential step forward, acknowledging the longstanding problem. “It is ambitious, but ambition builds the world,” he says.

“The financing side of things is going to be the biggest issue,” says Vicky Rollinson of WasteAid UK. The estimated cost of the action plan exceeds $6m (£4.7m) – a high figure for a resource-strapped country.

While she views the plan as a useful tool for attracting international funding, she is concerned about how it will be implemented, given the current NGO-supported approach that is at times unstructured, often existing as a substitute for the work of underfunded municipalities. The UN Development Programme reports that 84% of the Gambia’s plastic waste is improperly managed.

According to the Gambia Environmental Alliance, about 15 organisations outside government are working to address plastic pollution, including Precious Plastics, which recycles collected plastic into household products, and Women’s Initiative Gambia, which turns waste into handbags.

As a net importer of plastics, the challenges for the Gambia mirror those faced by other smaller, coastal nations without the infrastructure to manage the resulting waste.

A large portion of the Gambia’s recycling system relies on individuals such as Amie Sonko, a trained plastics picker at Seneya, a local collective. For Sonko, the issue is personal.

“I lost my daughter because of plastic,” she says. Sixteen-year-old Sanakanatou died of heart disease, which doctors attributed to years of inhaling fumes from burning plastics at makeshift dumpsites. Sonko now spends her days collecting plastics and educating the community about recycling and the perils of burning waste.

Combing Tanji beach on the Atlantic coast for polyethylene and polypropylene – materials used in jerry cans and buckets – she greets locals, berating some fishers for discarding their plastic netting as she goes. She calls out to workers on a rubbish lorry, inquiring whether they have any finds for her.

“Some people used to mock us, saying ‘You have no job if you are doing plastics,’” she says. “Now they know there’s money in it.”

Supported by WasteAid UK, Sonko’s group has received training and equipment to safely collect, sort and sell plastics to local processors. They can earn 9,000 dalasi (around £100) for a tonne, sharing the proceeds equally.

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In Bakoteh, the putrid smell from the 18-hectare landfill site is pervasive, even through a medical mask. A micro-economy of waste collection keeps the area busy: men with donkey carts collect locals’ rubbish and bring it to the site, where hundreds of “scavengers”, as they are known locally, pick through the material daily.

Makang Gassama sits amid his daily haul. His dirty Santa hat bobs up and down as he separates aluminium from plastic bottles. Unlike Sonko’s group, these informal waste pickers lack protective gear. Few wear masks or gloves, despite being exposed to toxins.

“I use the money for clothing, feeding and rent,” says Gassama, who earns about £40 a month. He sells bottles to women at the landfill’s edge, who clean and resell them for juice or oil, despite the health risks from bacterial contamination or chemical leaching.

“It’s a nice system and it gives self-employment,” he says, before wrapping up his bottles.

Sonko also relies on plastic recycling to feed her three surviving children. “It is my fish money,” she says, referring to the staple protein in her community. The Gambia is one of the world’s poorest countries, and rising commodity prices are driving up living costs. The World Food Programme suggests more than half the population lives in poverty.

The National Action Plan to End Plastic Pollution in the Gambia recognises the importance of this informal economy with a proposal requiring producers to bear the cost of collecting and recycling their packaging.

However, concerns remain whether a “just transition” will be realised for workers like Sonko and Gassama. “If there is no plastic in the Gambia, we will lose money and then our economy will be smaller,” says Gassama.

Cover photo: A waste-picker collects plastic rubbish at Bakoteh dump, Serekunda, the largest landfill site in the Gambia, November 2024. All photographs by Caitlin Kelly