North Africa

BOX 4.8

Emerging Alternatives to SUPs in the Middle East and North Africa

Two companies with their regional headquarters in the United Arab Emirates are at the forefront of providing green alternatives to single-use plastic (SUP) items in the Middle East and North Africa. MyEarth is driving innovation with its starch-based, fully compostable product lines.a These include biodegradable bags, straws, and food boxes. Its products try to bridge the gap between versatility and affordability and offer eco-friendly, economically viable alternatives to plastic items. MyEarth has established partnerships with several companies and is planning to expand within the region and beyond.

A second company, Avani Middle East, established in 2014 as a social service enterprise in Bali, launched its operations in the United Arab Emirates in 2017 as one of the country’s first companies with a strong commitment to reducing plastics in everyday lives.b Its most famous product, the cassava bag, is made of a cheap and common root vegetable and dissolves within a period of months, both at land and at sea. Other products include sugarcanefiber-based houseware, cornstarch straws, and wooden cutlery. Several companies have switched to Avani Middle East’s products; for example, the global retailer Virgin Megastores introduced the cassava bag in all its stores in the United Arab Emirates.c

These examples showcase the potential for green alternatives to plastic items in the region and highlight the importance of a level playing field to expand the use of green alternatives.

a. See the MyEarth website: https://www.myearth.ae/. b. See the Avani website: https://www.avanime.eco/. c. https://avanime.eco/blog/our-news-1/post/virgin-mega-store-to-roll-out-avani-s-bio-cassava-bag-1.

incentives, and well-funded research and data development about waste management. Today, plastic manufacturing is classified as a medium-intensity R&D industry, and the waste management sector is classified as low-intensity R&D (Pew Charitable Trusts and SYSTEMIQ 2020). If these industries transition (while keeping production costs low) toward more competitive market dynamics wherein consumer demand shifts toward more environmentally friendly products, then rapid innovation is mandatory to keep up with these shifts. Developing smart policies and regulatory frameworks, alternative business models, new materials, and more effective collection and recycling systems is critical to reduce plastic leakage into the oceans and make the most of changing market demands. Circular-economy approaches provide the best—indeed the most effective and efficient—means to address these circumstances.

Bans on SUPs

It may take time for the prices and the performance of alternatives to plastics to become competitive with plastics. However, plastic-polluted seas are a pressing problem now that must be addressed as soon as possible. Hence, banning SUP items may be a necessary step to stem the plastic tide in the short term.

In the Middle East and North Africa, only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have national bans on SUPs. Saudi Arabia bans the manufacture, advertisement, sale, import, and use of polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) plastics intended for one-time use, including personal care products; plastic bags intended for one-time use; and disposable food-service products such as spoons, plates, and cups.21 The United Arab Emirates bans the manufacture and import of nonbiodegradable semirigid plastic packaging for food, magazines, consumer durables, garbage bags, shrink-wrap, pallet wrap, and other disposables.22

However, many of the region’s economies have some sort of SUP-bag ban in place, in line with the global trend. Globally, most countries have adopted some form of legislation banning plastic bags—127 countries by 2018 (UNEP 2018b). These regulations span a range of interventions to reduce the manufacture, distribution, use, and trade of plastic bags, but the most common is the ban on free retail distribution, which 91 countries have adopted.

In the Middle East and North Africa, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the Republic of Yemen have adopted the approach of regulating market entry, manufacture or production, importation, and retail distribution of SUP bags. Other economies in the region have opted for partial bans or restrictions, mostly in the form of thickness requirements—for example, Tunisia bans bags thinner than 40 microns; the Republic of Yemen, 60; Jordan, 200; and Saudi Arabia, 250, while most European countries accept 50 microns—or they have imposed production-volume limits. Morocco banned the production, sale, and use of nonbiodegradable plastic bags in 2015. Although the use of virgin-plastic bags dropped, illegal production continues, and data on the growth in use of biodegradable bags are not available (Dalberg Advisors 2019b).

Egypt has put in place several retail initiatives to boost awareness, but there is no overarching framework and insufficient technical capacity to replace the use of plastic bags. Consumption is not controlled, and it averaged 124 bags per capita in 2015, equivalent to 12 billion per year (CEDARE 2020). A National Initiative for Reduction of Plastic Bags Consumption was launched in 2017, which led to the decree issued by the Governorates of the Red Sea and South Sinai in 2019 to restrict the single use of plastic bags. Table 4.3 summarizes the plastic-bag regulations in Middle East and North Africa countries.