The petition: “Promise to reuse bag” read: “I will re-use plastic supermarket bags or get a pretty plastic/cotton bag that I can carry everywhere in case I need it but I want 10 other people to do the same.” It attracted 11 more people who made a similar commitment.

Writing from somewhere in the UK, Brani was inspired by documentaries on sea life being swamped with plastic rubbish. That supermarkets are one of the largest contributors to the plastics menace goes without doubt.

In countries with little or no legislation, non biodegradable plastics are choking life out of flora and fauna in urban areas and slum communities are bearing the biggest brunt. In South Africa, plastic bags have been dubbed the “national flower” because so many can be seen flapping from fences and caught in bushes.

A visit to the one-million population Kibera, arguably Africa’s largest, or Mathare Valley across the city of Nairobi, once touted as the “Green City in the Sun”, is an eye-opener to the effect of plastics to the environment.

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I want to be more than frank: for the many times I have found myself on the countryside (my other home as an African), I have always known that it was time to lower my personal sanitation-compatibility level from maybe 6 out of 10, to just 1, if such a scale exists.

Don’t even ask me if the term sanitation-compatibility exists because I really do not know! For I am yet to see a single flush toilet in the whole of my district! But there is nothing to shout about the fact that sub-Saharan Africa is the world leader in open-field or bush defecation, if you may. Why sub-Saharan Africa?

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