Companies unwilling to invest in plastic waste management

Farirai Machivenyika Senior Reporter

There’s a need for the Government to promulgate a legal instrument to compel companies that use polyethene terephthalate (PET) in packaging their products to recycle with statistics showing that most of the plastic waste is being discharged into the environment.

This was said by the Chief Director in the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry, Professor Prosper Matondi when he appeared, Monday before the sitting of the joint parliamentary committees of Environment, Tourism and Climate and Energy and Power Development.

“A number of Companies in the PET (soda and water bottles, mouthwash bottles, peanut butter, oil containers etc) value chain are not willing to engage in meaningful corporate social responsibility for post-consumer waste in the absence of a legal
instrument.

“Less than 12 percent of the generated PET waste is being recycled while all the single plastic is being discharged into the environment without any recovery,” he said.

Prof Matondi said they were on a policy to progressively reduce and ultimately ban the use of single-use plastic packaging by December 2024.