Category Archives: Environment

The pros and cons of the culture of volunteerism in Namibia

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I was stunned to see that it’s been more than a year since I wrote a post on this site. Well, family issues did play a role in this lack of activity, as did a nagging awareness that social media is responsible for a catastrophic contribution towards global carbon emissions through its profligate use of electricity generated by fossil fuels. I am not a doom-and-gloomer when it comes to the many productive applications of social media – I am certainly an avid consumer myself, albeit (I hope) a discerning one – but I do try to rein in my use of it, and limit how many posts, stories and updates I contribute on various platforms.

(It’s also not escaped my notice, of course, that WordPress promotes the use of AI technology for the creation of images etc…”Down with this sort of thing” as they say on Craggy Island!)

However, the chief reason for a lack of webpage activity has been the fact that, perhaps more than at any other time in my life, I have been BUSY in ways I could not have foreseen this time last year. I continue to joyfully manage the Sew Good Namibia project on a volunteer basis, responsible for marketing and logistics while our four craftswomen create their wonderful designs (currently sold at 12 outlets around the country) to support their families. I’m also still writing the short stories that are regularly published in online journals and magazines – a second collection of which will soon appear in print (as The Limbo Circus) through the marvelous Modjaji Books.

However the principal reason why my days are filled with bustle and hustle is the incredible growth of the Promising Pages Pilot Initiative (PPPI) that was launched early last year. I have been overwhelmed by the success of the pilot phase since we kicked off with a few requests for book donations and suggestions for sites where we could put up suitable receptacles where ordinary Namibians could ‘Take a book. Read a book. Return a book’. As always, identifying dynamic individuals who understand a hypothetical idea and want to see it flourish as a practical enterprise entails expending a GREAT deal of time and effort with others who turn out to be time-wasters in the end. And, as I discovered with ‘Sew Good Namibia’, it’s critical to let a project develop organically in its own time, and in its own way, rather than imposing inflexible and unrealistic expectations on an untried concept.

In addition, each and every one of the thousands of books, pamphlets, journals, study guides, and magazines that have been given to the PPPI to date have to be assessed for suitability (older, pre-Independence materials, especially, will not pass muster in these more enlightened times and have been donated to the Katutura Community Arts Centre for use in installations and other artworks). Then these have to be categorised according to the the age of the readership and genre before being packed up ready for distribution.

At the time of writing we now have little library installations in disadvantaged communities in Okahandja and Hakahana, with others scheduled soon for the Physically Active Youth and Mammadu Trust premises in Katutura, Windhoek. The University of Namibia Main Campus also has two large bookshelves in place and regularly replenished with a wide range of fiction, textbooks, non-fiction and Africana. It was amazing to see how many faculty and students turned up for the official launch in March, racing to select some reading matter to borrow the minute the ribbon was cut on the shelving. More little libraries will be established at Groot Aub and Rehoboth, to the south of Windhoek, in the near future and plans for further expansion are in the works.

All this requires a great deal of time, effort, admin, petrol and schlepping, 7 days a week, which I am thrilled to have the hours and energy to still contribute right now. I’ve also expanded my circle of friends as generous donors and enthusiastic community members embrace the PPPI idea and help it to expand. An additional gift.

Promising Pages Pilot Initiative (PPPI) poster created in four languages widely used by Namibians

BUT. Namibia has a huge cohort of keen, articulate, educated and media-savvy young people currently looking for work. Our youth unemployment rate is almost 3 times the global average. It is unsustainable for PPPI to continue to be administered and run by one, unpaid volunteer yet this is how so many grassroots projects continue to exist in Namibia while expensive, pie-in-the-sky propositions receive extensive taxpayer funding only to sink without a trace. If the government and international funding bodies are serious about producing future generations conversant in a language that’s not the mother tongue for the vast majority of them, then movements – such as the PPPI – that increase access to English-language materials need to be formalised and then supported by appropriate institutions and development partners. Furthermore, local authors and creatives need financial support to produce books that reflect the lives of our young citizens, published in our indigenous languages for free distribution around the country.

The search is on for someone, or a group of someones, who can take the PPPI and turn it into a sustainable model for a nationwide network of fixed installations and mobile libraries while being paid a decent salary to do so. Let’s hope that by the time I check in again, this will have become a reality.

2023 – A Most Remarkable Year…

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In the middle of 2023, it suddenly occurred to me that ‘Sew Good Namibia’ had evolved into an established and thriving business, almost without me noticing. I say ‘almost’ because handling the logistical and managerial aspects – essentially my wheelhouse – is now pretty much a fulltime job so I had gradually become aware that these tasks were taking up more and more of my time!

The penny dropped when a shop at the coast approached us to make a range of products specifically for their clientele of crafters, knitters and people who crochet. Up until this year, part of my role has entailed sending out many messages each month to potential stockists to find out if they would like showcase our products, a rather thankless task since many never even opened my DMs! Not only did the Wool Cafe in Swakopmund want to place a large order with us, they also insisted on paying the craftswomen UP FRONT for the custom-made items we sent. This was a first for us in Namibia – all our other local stockists took our goods on consignment, an arrangement that’s not without its drawbacks as in the past things have been stolen from outlets, or have been returned to us damaged or dirty, and it can be difficult to maintain accurate records of the stock held and sold at each store, too.

Not long afterwards, a second shop, the Rooi Dak Padstal run by Barkhan Dune Retreat also placed a large order with us, for which they were similarly prepared to pay immediately. This represents a significant change in our retail model since it is obviously preferable for the craftswomen to be paid for their hard work straight away, rather than waiting months (and sometimes even years!) to be rewarded for their labour.

We now have ten shops across Namibia that sell our upcycled, ecofriendly range. Over 2023, two had sadly fallen away but these were quickly replaced and augmented by others and thus the roster increased in size. Some outlets are very small and only shift a few items occasionally but it’s important that we maintain a presence wherever people looking for ‘local-is-lekker’ gifts, especially, might see our products and decide to make a ‘Proudly Namibian’ purchase.

Fairly early on in the development of the sewing initiative, the two chief producers and I took a decision to keep Sew Good Namibia at a micro-enterprise scale. We had all seen how – when projects grow too fast and too quickly – problems with cash flow, personnel and quality control come to take up far too much time and effort. Nevertheless, during 2023 we decided to hand off the exclusive production of our Budget Book Bags to a new member-in-training – Bianca Beukes – and are in negotiations with a skilled seamstress in Walvis Bay – Loide Kambida – for her to make a new product line of stuffed toys.

For several years, we have sat with an unsold pile of table runners like these. They are an example of something that was suggested to us as a potentially worthwhile product line, but which then failed to sell. Suddenly, however, people can’t seem to get enough of them and they have become a runaway best-seller at several of the stockists that support us.

All in all, we can look back on the year past (as well as at our income statements!) and feel a great deal of pride in how far we have come. We have ceased making fiddly, labour-intensive items, such as pencil cases, which were never a great success, and now just focus on a few things – chiefly bags – that we can make well, and at speed.

We are also now able to make regular donations of fabric we cannot use to schools and creatives (such as fashion students and people who make crafts for a living), which is a critical part of our ‘nothing goes to waste’ remit.

Onwards and upwards into 2024, as they say here!

The WORD has been HEARD?

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It’s now four years since Sew Good Namibia was launched – a long gestation period when you realise that it was back in 2016, when I visited Jakarta for the first time, that I started to think seriously about the impact of Western lifestyles on the global environment and how I could throw my energies into trying to live more sustainably, and get my fellow Namibians to do the same.

But when I began approaching local businesses and private individuals in Windhoek to share my ideas about turning waste into high-quality products that could be sold to improve the livelihoods of our poorest citizens, I sometimes felt as if I was talking in Martian or Klingon…

Cut to 2023 and it seems as if finally, finally, the message has begun to sink in here. Perhaps it’s the news footage of wildfires raging across Europe, or videos of Cape fur seals along our coastline ensnared in abandoned fishing gear but – better late than never! – it seems as if the country is waking up to the fact that we cannot continue to behave as if the fate of our planet is not our responsibility – individually or collectively.

Thus the last few months have seen a marked upswing in interest with regard to the work of Sew Good’s craftswomen. Indeed we now have six outlets selling our bags and household goods made from upcycled luxury furnishing fabric, with several more poised to stock our products in the near future.

We now receive regular messages from companies keen to supply us with unwanted materials that we can turn into new product lines – such as these burlap and jute coffee-bean sacks that Amory fashions into sets of plant-pot holders/storage containers (which became a best seller overnight). Donating to projects such as our’s doesn’t just solve a logistical problem for these businesses but burnishes their reputation as enterprises who get the ‘ecofriendly’ message and want to support the local-is-lekker philosophy.

I am now looking for a new project that can utilise more of the unwanted waste that comes my way now that Sew Good Namibia has finally hit its post-Covid stride and generates income month in, month out. One idea is to train people who are ending a custodial sentence to make small picture frames from wooden offcuts discarded by framing businesses. And I still want to link up hotels and accommodation establishments with a home industry group that can upcycle guest soaps – as has been done successfully elsewhere.

There’s a long way still to go. Namibian consumers are ready to embrace a greener lifestyle it seems but often they are faced with choices that are a compromise at best. I no longer bore people senseless talking about the scourge of plastic waste and similar issues (although the threat of climate change is one that still only really reaches one sector of the community apparently). But pointing out that buying an imported cotton or paper bag is not a viable alternative to a single-use plastic bag, or that industries that claim to recycle old clothes are often guilty of greenwashing can be tricky if someone is genuinely trying to commit to changing their purchasing habits and you don’t want to demoralise them with buzzkill

But the message is here, and it’s here to stay. I no longer believe that people are just shrugging and ignoring the small steps they can take to halt Earth’s destruction, nor are they suffering from eco-fatigue. The burgeoning green ethos is captured so beautifully in a quote I am seeing more and more online: Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

Burying Our Heads in the Sand?

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A person working in any capacity to protect the environment quickly becomes, for better or worse, a spokesperson for the ‘green movement’ more generally. And, rightly, must be prepared to submit to scrutiny regarding their own lifestyles – not excluding the self-auditing that accompanies a bewildering number of everyday decisions.

The temptation to lecture people about their polluting habits or to correct misapprehensions they might voice about topics such as recycling, GMOs, renewable energy etc. can be hard to resist. But simply attacking individuals rather than building consensus towards meaningful, positive change is unlikely to result in the desired outcomes. Defensive people have a habit of acquiring selective deafness and just entrenching themselves further in their own little foxholes…

I’m often guilty myself of ‘Why don’t they just…?’ thinking too, when it comes to some of the seemingly intractable issues confronting our planet. Visiting SE Asia recently (yes, full disclosure, I didn’t get there on foot) I watched as a man – presumably hired by the hotel where I was staying – painstakingly swept up all the plastic bottles and other such debris that was dumped on the beach by the high tide every morning, then dug holes right there in the sand in which to bury this sizeable accumulation of non-biodegradable rubbish. His daily activities represented, in microcosm, much of the world’s attitude towards this particular problem: dump our trash out of sight and leave the consequences for another day.

Workers remove plastic waste from Kuta Beach, Bali in January 2021. The 30 tonnes of trash collected was later transported to a landfill site. Photograph from the CNN Travel website.

Yet in consuming foodstuffs portioned into tiny, single-use plastic sachets and polystyrene clamshells, and buying bottled water – all in the name of hygiene – I was, inevitably, contributing to the environmental degradation of an island with very limited capacity to deal with refuse management. What is the answer when we are confronted with dilemmas such as these?

It can be draining (and frankly downright unfeasible) to weigh the merits of each alternative over the many others available when it comes to trying to live more ethically, especially as companies get more clued up about how to deploy greenwashing as a marketing tactic. We eventually become jaded and view with scepticism the euphemisms and images wielded by advertisers we suspect are only paying lip service to environmentalism (see, for example: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220614-synthetic-or-natural-which-is-best-for-climate-and-health). This is especially true when regulatory bodies are still playing catch-up with respect to how vague claims to ‘holistic’, ‘wellness’ or ‘earth-friendly’ products can be evaluated against empirical (sometimes contested) research, and codified.

Do individuals (especially travellers hoping to have a relaxing holiday after the prolonged limbo necessitated by Covid-19) have the finances, time or inclination to always research and settle on the most eco-friendly option out of many – from choosing a reef-safe sunscreen to hiring an e-scooter instead of a conventional motorbike? And what about the trade-off for locals who must find a way to offer their goods and services at competitive prices – which often means eschewing those that are greener but much more costly?

I’ve been online now drafting this for an hour or so – ample time to make my own regrettable contribution to climate change (the electricity-hungry processes driven by social media and other internet-enabled communication mean that globally, netizens are responsible for a larger carbon footprint than the aviation industry). Does this make me a hypocrite? That would be for others to judge I suppose, but my own philosophy is that while it is ultimately the responsibility of governments to work together towards reaching binding agreements in time to pull us all back from the brink of climate catastrophe and to deploy their budgets in support of research and innovation rather than business-as-usual, we each have a part to play, in whatever way is realistic for us at the time, and using our skills and talents to the best of our ability.

When I used to write opinion pieces for The Namibian newspaper, my unofficial tagline was: ‘If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem.’ Rather blunt, perhaps, but it did encapsulate how I believe that it’s not enough to gripe and throw a few dollars at an issue in order to assuage your guilt. Effective advocacy doesn’t have to be shouty and performative, either (in fact it’s my view that a good way to generate unhelpful pushback over literally any debate is to be intolerant of people who need some convincing to be swayed).

In essence, every gesture we make towards greener living – be it ever so seemingly insignificant – leads us away from the worst-case scenarios we can hardly bear to contemplate. As does every comment we drop into our supermarket’s suggestion box, every lift we decide to share with another car owner, and every written response we demand of our elected officials.

Organisations such as Greenpeace UK have been pushing for a ban on plastic food and beverage packaging and containers for years. While retailers used to insist that their customers preferred their fresh produce wrapped, public opinion and consumer behaviour are forcing them to switch back to loose fruit and vegetables, just as some governments have also been prompted to introduce bans on packaging such as this. Photo: © Angela Glienicke / Greenpeace

If we want to contribute towards a sustainable future, our own efforts need to be sustainable too. Not one-off, ‘look at me’ gestures filmed and posted ‘for the likes’ but small daily acts, often undertaken in private, and perhaps involving even some element of sacrifice or expense (which most of us can ill afford these days). What is unconscionable is sitting back and thinking that as individuals we have no power to turn the tide.

Small steps and the bigger picture

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The first ‘Good for Namibia’ project – the ‘Sew Good’ women’s group, embodies the grassroots approach in three ways. Firstly, it addresses the need for the most disadvantaged members of our community – often those most affected by environmental degradation, climate change, and other linked issues – to increase their incomes; learn useful entrepreneurial skills; and plan for the future through a sustainable business model.Secondly, the items created by the group (and by others I hope to assist in the future) are made in Namibia from locally available recycled materials. Therefore the profits remain within the communities that make the products and the transportation costs (actual, and in terms of the negative impacts of fossil fuel-use and pollution) are kept to a minimum. Lastly, of course, by upcycling waste the projects will contribute towards reducing pollution in our country and beyond.

This waste – primarily plastic bottles and fast-food containers – was photographed in Windhoek last week. It has collected in a rainwater channel and will block the drainage eventually, when – as we all fervently wish – it rains in a few weeks. The flooding that will then ensue as the flow backs up will inundate housing upstream, often in areas where newer, low cost housing has been constructed and informal settlements proliferate.

Local activism plays a role in advancing the goals of the global environmental movement too and so it is gratifying to see that Windhoek will host its first organised march against climate change at the end of this week. https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Environmental-Conservation-Organization/Friday-For-Future-Windhoek-102120687805024/

Kenya’s experiment in banning plastic bags

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When Kenya decided to introduce severe penalties for the manufacturing, distribution, sale and use of plastic (polythene) carrier bags two years ago, it seemed like a pragmatic response to a critical issue. However, as this article shows, not only are the sanctions disproportionate (in my view), but efforts to work around the ban by introducing ‘greener’ alternatives have had negative as well as positive consequences: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-49421885. Clearly, well-intentioned legislation to address environmental issues will be caught on the back foot if it fails to take into consideration the circumstances specific to any particular setting.

Confusion over plastic bag levy in Namibia

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The national levy on non-biodegradable single-use plastic bags previously given away gratis at Namibian retailers was due to be gazetted on August 1st this year (of course, the actual cost of providing these ‘free’ bags has formerly been absorbed into the price of products for sale). Subsequent searches online failed to produce any information regarding progress of this important legislation, which will affect pretty much every adult in the country, week in, week out: https://www.lelamobile.com/content/81105/Government-distances-itself-from-retailers-plastic-levy/

Whilst it’s commendable that our legislators are getting up to speed with the need to incorporate environmental issues into policies and laws more fully, and levies imposed in other countries have had significant positive results in this regard (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/31/shoppers-use-of-plastic-bags-in-england-continues-to-fall), nevertheless we should all be aiming to reduce and eventually eliminate our use of such plastics in our lives.

Ask for a cardboard box to hold your items; use fabric bags such as those made by the ‘Sew Good’ project; ask for price stickers to be put directly onto single loose fresh produce (such as butternuts).