Outlier Environment
Plastic waste in Africa set to quadruple by 2060
The amount of plastic waste in Sub-Saharan Africa will quadruple by 2060. The region will be one of the world’s biggest sources of plastic pollution in rivers, lakes and oceans, according to projections by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In 2019, 22-million tonnes of plastic, most of it mismanaged waste, made its way into rivers and oceans. Worldwide plastic use will triple in the next 40 years. It will increase the most in developing countries in Asia and Africa.
South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria are the three biggest contributors to plastic pollution in Africa. In 2018, South Africa ‘leaked’ about 107,000 tonnes of plastic into water ecosystems, according to a study by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
In 2022, 175 countries voted to create a treaty to eliminate plastic pollution. In November 2024, governments will come together in Busan, Republic of Korea, for the fifth and last round of negotiations for a global treaty to end plastic pollution.
🔗 This was first published on 5 December 2023. For more like this, browse the full Our World in Charts collection
July rainfall breaks weather records in Western Cape
A series of cold fronts brought severe weather and record-breaking rainfall to the winelands and Cape Town in July, with at least 12 weather stations reporting more than 300mm of rain, according to data from the South African Weather Service.
Most of the rain fell in towns along the mountain ranges of the Boland and the Hottentots Holland. Franschhoek received 619.2mm, making it the town’s wettest month on record.
Kenilworth race course in Cape Town recorded 563.2mm, the second-highest amount in the province. In Newlands, 5km away, Kirstenbosch national botanical gardens recorded its wettest month since 1999 with more than 500mm of rain.
July’s rainfall is the highest recorded in Cape Town for the month in the past 60 years, says Prof Guy Midgley from Stellenbosch University’s School for Climate Studies. This is despite a drier-than-normal start to the winter.
Based on records dating back to 1901, the Western Cape typically receives an average of 41mm of rain in July.
The world’s oldest active termite mounds have been found in Namaqualand by researchers from Stellenbosch University’s Department of Soil Science and Earth Sciences, working with experts from Hungary.
The mounds in the Buffels River Valley are still inhabited by the southern harvester termite. These mounds are rewriting our understanding of climate and carbon storage back to before the last Ice Age, the researchers say.
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