Member - Butakoola Village Association for Development

I introduce the BUVAD innovative approach of re – using waste plastic bottles to construct affordable rain water harvesting tanks aimed at helping communities eliminate the environmental hazard of accumulating carelessly littered waste plastic bottles without burning to minimize on carbon emission and raise environmental awareness Kayunga Central region of Uganda for your kind consideration of our initiative to the reduce plastic waste in Uganda. Kayunga is an agro based district where the accumulating waste plastic bottles have led to a decline in the income per capita due to the worsening suffocation rate of the soils by waste plastic bottles. Also, water channels are being blocked while water bodies are being polluted by these carelessly disposed waste plastic bottles. There is too much plastic waste accumulation in lakes, rivers and oceans that feed from rivers like the Nile River which flows across Kayunga District in Uganda and pour its waters into the Mediterranean sea. The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean. So all plastic waste from along the Nile can end up into the Atlantic ocean. We are currently implementing this innovation on a mild scale but wish to scale up in order to have a significant impact here in Uganda and around the globe in communities that would be triggered to adopt it. Marine wildlife such as seabirds, whales, fishes and turtles, mistake plastic waste for prey, and most die of starvation as their stomachs are filled with plastic debris. Not forgetting plastic waste effects on climate and the environment. The Improper waste plastics disposal and absence of a monetary value for the used waste plastic bottles have worsened the environmental crisis. This crisis is more severe in urban and peri-urban centers, attributed to poor societal attitude towards the environment and lack of consciousness to our surroundings. Government way back, tried to ban the use of plastics. It was done but with futility. The most important issue is to come up with a sustain-ably profitable approach like the BUVAD approach of Re-using the waste plastic bottles to build rainwater harvesting tanks in affordable capacities to user communities. It’s upon these findings that BUVAD, after a study of the area problems together with the community and local council leadership, mobilized to come up with mitigative approaches to the outstanding health and environmental problems.