Muyiwa Oyinlola - Plastic waste does not need to become pollution

Plastics pollution is a huge contributor to climate change. Every stage of the plastics process harms the environment, from the energy used to make them to the greenhouse gases released as they decompose.

Up to 12 million tons of it enter global oceans annually, where it kills marine life, piles into enormous garbage patches, and crumbles into microplastics that resurface in drinking water.

Professor Muyiwa Oyinlola, director of DMU’s Institute for Energy and Sustainable Development (IESD) is working with partners around the world to look at how we can use plastic waste differently. 

The idea is simple – instead of seeing plastic as waste, what if it could be repurposed into products that can be put to good use in communities, and even spark new start-up ideas?

Muyiwa’s projects have been supported by organisations including the British Council, the Innovation for African Universities network, and the Royal Society for Engineering.

“In order to sustainably tackle plastic pollution in Africa, we need to do things differently and look at ways to grow a global network that can benefit the continent,” said Muyiwa. 

One successful project has been the creation of a home from waste plastic bottles in Aubja, Nigeria. Muyiwa worked alongside a research team that took 10,000 bottles made from PET – which can break down into microplastics and find its way into the oceans – and used them as bricks.

They filled them with sand and water to give them weight and bonded with clay and cement, built a prototype house, working alongside entrepreneurs in Nigeria.

The cost was just 35% of the price it would normally cost to build, and a recent study found that people living in the bottle house, when compared to homes made from mud or cement, said it provided a more comfortable temperature to live in – suggesting upcycled materials such as sand-filled plastic bottles, could be a solution for affordable housing in low-income communities.

But it is not only houses which waste plastic has been used for. Muyiwa is also part of a project called Circular Plastics, a collaboration between three universities and one NGO in the UK with project partners in Kenya, Rwanda, and Nigeria. It turns used plastic water bottles into products that support entrepreneurship in middle-income countries.

To date, six products have been launched that support self-sufficiency in sectors including farming, fishing and mobility. In Makoko, known as Nigeria’s floating slum, people have to navigate waterways in dilapidated boats and leaking canoes. Plastic bottles have been turned into suction cylinders for boat balers, that use the natural pitch and swell of the water to syphon away excess water, preventing capsizing.

In Rwanda, a customised manual picker has been designed from waste plastic to help harvest fruit with less waste. Plastic has been broken down and 3D printed to make new, more efficient tools, including a custom machete peeler.

Tradition machetes can often remove a lot of the product as well as the skin. Printing thinner blades reduces that loss and means farmers have more product to sell.