An effort to clean up plastic waste and turn it into building materials shifts gear as COVID-19 arrives and protective gear falls short
GULU, Uganda - When the Ugandan government ordered all non-essential workplaces shut to contain the coronavirus pandemic in late March, Peter Okwoko and his colleague Paige Balcom kept working.
But the pair - who had been turning collected plastic waste into building materials such as roofing tiles and pavers since last year - shifted gear and instead began manufacturing makeshift plastic face shields from discarded plastic bottles.
"The doctor from Gulu regional referral hospital requested we make 10 face shield masks urgently because they didn't have enough" and the hospital had just received its first COVID-19 patient, said Okwoko, 29, a co-founder of Takataka Plastics.
Late last month, the Ministry of Health said Uganda's public hospitals are likely to run out of existing stocks of protective equipment within three months.
Balcom, 26, a mechanical engineer who met Okwoko in 2019 while doing research on plastic pollution in Uganda, said some of the material used in the face shields now comes from hospital waste, such as used intravenous drip bottles.
