The Democratic Republic of Congo is facing an unexpected crisis after plastic waste choked off water flow at a dam that multiple cities rely on for hydroelectric power.
What's happening?
According to Reuters, the Ruzizi hydroelectric dam, located in Lake Kivu on the southern border of Congo, is so choked with plastic waste that it is cutting off water flow to the generators, causing blackouts in the city of Bukavu, as well as other places around the region.
"This waste effectively blocks the water," said Ljovy Mulemangabo, the provincial director of national power company SNEL. "Water has difficulty entering the forced conduits to provide the pressure and speed required for the machines."
So far, the plan has been for cleaners to head out daily and attempt to remove the plastic bottles, jerrycans (large plastic jugs used to transport water, fuel, and other liquids), and random plastic detritus from the waters surrounding the generators, but those efforts haven't been able to keep the plant flowing consistently, as the waste reaches depths of 14 meters underwater.
"Our bosses are pressing us because of delays in completing their orders, and we don't know what to do," Alex Mbilizi, a metalworker in Bukavu, said of the blackouts impacting his work.
Why is plastic waste important?
Plastic waste has been a growing problem for years now around the world. Most plastics are not biodegradable, meaning they take hundreds or even thousands of years to break back down into their base elements without some kind of human assistance. To make matters worse, while they don't break down, the plastics do break, shredding into microplastics that can cause major environmental and health problems if left unchecked.
Plastic in water can be particularly dangerous; if left unattended, the chemicals in the plastic can leach into the water supply, which can impact people's endocrine systems.
Congo isn't the only country fighting with plastic waste; the remote Easter Island in the South Pacific Ocean is home to a number of unique species and has found itself trapped in a "plastic vortex" due to microplastics infiltrating its ecosystem.
What's being done about plastic waste?
In Congo, crews continue to work daily to remove as much of the plastic as they can, but it's slow work that has yet to consistently show results.
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Globally, the fight against plastic rages on, especially in the global south. Most notably, the Indonesian government has announced plans to fully stop accepting plastic waste from other nations in 2025, in the hopes of stemming the flood of trash into its country.
On a macro level, scientists are looking into new ways to deal with plastics, including chemical processes that fully break it down into less harmful elements.
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