Project Length – 12 months 

We’re very excited to announce this project has been supported by Depeche Mode and Hublot through the Memento Mori Tour charity partnership! 

The partnership has chosen to support projects that tackle plastic pollution. Since June 2023, 14 projects have been launched across 10 different countries via three approach categories: Plastic-Free, Waste Management and Clean Ups. You can read more on the Conservation Collective website. 

This is also a continuation of a project that was previously supported by Lamu Environment Foundation and due to their success we decided to fund again!

Problem Statement 

Marine litter, mainly plastics, combined with overfishing and rising sea temperatures pose the greatest risk to the resilience of coastal communities and the marine life on which they depend. Tons of plastic waste are discarded globally. These plastics indirectly access the sea through rivers, sewage, storm water or winds.  

The ecological, economic, and social challenges due to plastic waste are evident: loss of turtle nesting sites due to polluted beaches, mangroves choked with plastic pollution leading to reduced fisheries, and limited awareness of the impact of pollution on health and sanitation in communities due to poor waste management systems in coastal villages. 

Project Summary 

The project continues Bahari Moja’s key rolle in addressing the large build-up of marine waste on beaches through regular beach cleans and raising community awareness. But it also aims to understand 2 key principles. 

1. How much and where the marine litter is arriving from, how it is impacting biodiversity, with turtles as a flagship species and how coastal clean-ups impact marine life  

1. How Bahari Moja as an organisation can best grow into its role, with sufficient capacity to manage these multiple responsibilities and how to best implement and record our impact both socio-economically and environmentally through the creation of a comprehensive strategic plan and a collaborative robust data system that will ultimately inform us of our next steps. 

Objective 

To reduce plastic pollution on beaches, improve data collection systems, and foster partnerships for effective project delivery and conservation. 

Specific Outcomes 

To deliver on their objective a variety of methodologies will be used.  

A site visit, conducted by Local Ocean Conservation will be carried out to help design the appropriate approaches and methodologies to adopt for data collection and monitoring of plastic debris, and how to feed the data into other systems. A menu of options that might be adopted include: monitoring turtle nests, carrying out beach profiling, working with the fishing community, as well as educating and creating awareness about the marine environment and conducting community outreach. Furthermore, attempts will be made to minimize duplication of efforts and to ensure collaboration among the broader data collection systems utilized to integrate data.  

This project will invite key speakers to community gatherings to introduce the latest ideas about marine environments and what can be done. These events will build on the data collected from Kiunga coastline, which provide the communities with their livelihoods.  

As in the past, the project will continue to promote proper waste management with periodic clean ups of the beaches (and villages) that are part of the data collection system. The recyclable waste will be transported to the Bahari Moja Centre, where it will be sorted and shredded before being conveyed to market for recycling. The project will continue to support women and youth in developing alternative livelihoods.  

Finally, Bahari Moja Centre will be strengthened through the design of a strategic development plan, with the corresponding additional human resources and training. 

About the Organisation 

Bahari Moja has been working since 2018 with a focus on improving the management of marine litter and plastic in coastal beaches and marine ecosystems. As a community initiative, led by 200 women and 60 youth, and registered in 2022 as a CBO, Bahari Moja has worked to reduce plastic pollution in the marine and terrestrial environment, reduce litter, improve waste management and develop income-generating activities linked to plastic recycling.  

With support from and in collaboration with the Northern Rangeland Trust, The Nature Conservancy, Kiwayu Safaris, Kenya Wildlife Services, and others, Bahari Moja has collected and sorted tonnes of plastic and transported what is recyclable to markets in Lamu and beyond. It has raised awareness among schools and communities of the importance of protecting the environment; it has increased incomes particularly of women by training people in making eco-bricks and crafts for sale; it has built its own plastic collection centre out of eco-bricks, and has been donated a solar-powered 3-phase shredder which will drastically reduce the cost of transportation for HPDE plastic.  

Furthermore, it has seen an increase in sea turtle nesting on beaches cleared by Bahari Moja. In 2023, with the award of a LEF grant permitting a more systematic organisation of activities, Bahari Moja was able to enhance its impact, but more importantly has identified areas, as outlined in this proposal, where it will have even greater impact, as well as feed into and complement the work of other marine conservationists along the East African coast. 

Check out Bahari Moja’s instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/baharimoja/