Assessment, Identification, and Quantification of Plastic Pollution Along the Shoreline of Lake Turkana, Kenya

Plastics are described as the synthesized polymer compounds mainly made from petrochemical raw materials and characterized by high molecular mass plasticity. Due to its menace so far noticed in the environment, there was need to assess and quantify plastics debris along Lake Turkana shoreline for effective management. A total of 8 sampling stations were identified along the western side of Lake Turkana. Random sampling using a 10 m x 10 m (100 m2) quadrat was used in the sampling to quantify and identify the types of plastic in the selected sites. Preliminary results indicated that Daraja was higest in palstic waste (21%) followed by Namakat and Kenya oil (17% each) while the least affected site was Lowarangak (3%). On plastic types, PETE gave the highest number (37%) followed by LDPE (22%) while PVC was the least plastic in composition (3%). The areas with high number of plastics/m2 were Daraja, Namakat and Kenya oil with values of 6 plastics/m2 and 5 plastics/m2 each respectively. This makes the three areas to be plastic waste hotspots. Soft drink bottles, bottled water and cooking oil packages were found to be the most abundant plastic wastes in the studied area. Generally, the number of plastic waste was considerably high (ranging from 1 to 6 plastics/m2) with plastic densities ranging from 0.015kg/m2 to 0.029kg/m2 along Lake Turkana shoreline. This is expected to rise with rise in population and continued use of the same. The need to establish collection points in the area to contain the spread of plastics to the water body in addition to moving settlement areas away from the shore were reccommended. The need to enforce NEMA regulations was also emphasised to reduce plastic proliferation and use in addition to building capacity of the resource users to responsibly use plastic materials.