Lucky Kenya, with a president and his deputy committed to recycling

Almost everywhere you turn these days, you will spot the catchy logo with the legend “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”.

You can also turn to dozens of organisations and websites that will teach you how reducing, reusing, and recycling can help your community and the environment by saving money, energy, and natural resources.

Paper, naturally, is one of the materials that is easiest to recycle. It is thrown away more than any other material, making up 30 to 40 per cent of all waste in most countries. In the United States and Europe, some 60 per cent of all paper used is actually recycled.

From the garbage bin paper is recovered and used to make new paper products, thus realising great savings on the trees annually cut down to make “fresh” paper. There is no telling how much recycling  can contribute to saving our forests if we aim at the ratios achieved in the developed world.

Tissues, cardboard, books, packaging materials, magazines, newspapers, wrappers, and all kinds of paper products can nowadays be made from recycled paper.

Recycling is the way of the future and in Kenya we are lucky to have a president and deputy president who are champions of the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle philosophy.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, have both recently revealed that even before the recycling mill is called into action, they find their used newspapers ideal for wrapping meat.

In this age when infernal non-biodegradable plastic is clogging up every nook and cranny, it is indeed gratifying that we have leaders conscious of the need to reuse newspapers as part of the effort to promote environmentally-friendly, cost-effective packaging solutions.

That is why we in the newspaper industry must ensure that President Kenyatta and Deputy President Ruto will never run out of wrapping paper for their meat, takeaway chicken, and chips aka chips funga, fresh fruits and vegetables, and all other various wrapping needs.

In fact, the President is so committed to promoting newspapers as wrapping paper that he still subscribes to his daily copies, though, he confesses, he does not read them. His deputy has the chore of reading for him.

And it is not just buying newspapers purely for their meat-wrapping utility. President Kenyatta’s family, I am unreliably informed, has invested substantially in a media group that counts in its stable a daily newspaper.

He would, thus, qualify as a member of the Media Owners’ Association even if he finds nothing worth reading in The People, but values the title for its myriad other uses.

To further keep the newspaper reuse campaign going, I would suggest he borrows a great idea from his bossom-buddy, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and push legislation banning plastic wrapping and packaging materials.

On our part as the Kenyan media, we will continue to churn out tonnes and tonnes of reusable newspapers so that there need never be fear of wrapping paper shortages.

I understand some blogger-types at State House have been trying to persuade the President that newspapers are going the way of the dinosaur in the digital age.

Not yet. The fellows are only trying to justify more funds for the muckraking online gutter publications they throw good money at to no avail.
And in any case, you cannot swat a fly with an iPad. Or wrap meat in it.

And just one more thing. The President wonders why the Kenyan media is afraid of the fines stipulated in the contested new media laws if it does not intend to commit any offences.

I also wonder why anybody would be so afraid to face a court of law if confident in his innocence.

   
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Kenyan cyberspace has recently generated plenty of humour with stories on the more interesting origins of some place names. Well, out past Emali in Makueni County a fortnight ago, I came across a place called Welovea. That, I gathered, is the local corruption for “welfare”. And, no, it is not true that the governor has promised email access for all his voters in Emali. He has got enough on his hands weaning the County Assembly representatives off the welfare syndrome.

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