By Benard Ogembo, Conor McGlone, James Wakibia

At the sprawling Dandora dumpsite in Nairobi, the air is thick with the smell of decay and the cries of scavenging marabou storks. They perch like sentinels on mountains of trash, watching men, women, and children pick through the heaps. Here, survival is a daily gamble, with the value of your labour measured in the weight of plastic bottles, scrap metal, and whatever else can be sold.

But for waste pickers like Solomon Njoroge, even that fragile survival is slipping away.

“We used to pick. Now we’re just searching,” says Njoroge, 35, chairperson of the Nairobi Recyclable Waste Association. He’s been at Dandora since he was eight years old. “The best plastic is gone before it gets here.”

By “best,” he means the plastics that fetch money, mostly PET bottles from soft drinks and mineral water. These days, private waste companies collect that directly from high-end estates, supermarkets, and hotels. What makes it to Dandora is largely worthless: soiled, damaged, or flimsy single-use plastics, much of it imported from abroad.

The twist? Big private firms are now profiting from a new global “solution” to the plastic crisis, plastic credits.

What Are Plastic Credits?

Globally, more than 460 million tonnes of virgin plastic are produced annually, with 428 million tonnes made from fossil fuels. Around 353 million tonnes become waste, yet only 9% is recycled. The rest lingers for centuries, clogging rivers, choking marine life, and breaking down into microplastics that have been found everywhere – from Arctic ice to the human body. Despite this, global plastic use is projected to triple by 2060.

Plastic credits, modelled on carbon offsets, are marketed as a fix. Companies fund plastic collection or recycling projects, often in the Global South, and claim that as compensation for the plastic they produce. In theory, this encourages clean-up. In reality, critics say it’s a loophole that lets corporations keep producing plastic while polishing their eco-friendly image.

One of the biggest players, Verra, known for setting carbon credit standards, launched its plastic credit programme in 2021, partnering with Nestlé, Danone, and petrochemical giants like Shell, Dow, and ExxonMobil. Kenya, India, and Thailand have all hosted Verra-backed projects.

Now, as UN negotiators meet in Geneva to hammer out a global plastics treaty, Verra is lobbying to have plastic credits included in the final agreement. Activists warn that it could derail real solutions, shifting the focus from reducing production to merely offsetting it on paper.

“There are solid systems like Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) that make polluters pay for the waste they create,” says Gerance Mutwol of Greenpeace Africa. “Plastic credits are usually more of a greenwashing tactic, a way for companies to run away from responsibility.”

The controversy mirrors the carbon credit sector. In 2023, The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial revealed that 94% of certain rainforest carbon credits certified by Verra had not resulted in extra conservation. Companies like Shell and Disney had used those credits to brand themselves “carbon neutral,” even as deforestation continued.

Verra’s CEO at the time, David Antonioli, strongly rejected the findings of the investigation and defended Verra’s impact on the conservation of rainforests. However, he stepped down just months later and did not give a reason for his departure.

Critics also say that the expanding market for plastic credits risks undermining the livelihoods of informal waste workers, like the pickers at Dandora, as companies step in between trash bins and dumpsites to extract the most valuable plastic. They argue that the plastic credits system could generate glossy sustainability reports without changing the amount of plastic entering the environment. And in Kenya, it’s already affecting livelihoods.

Kenya’s Role: TakaTaka and Bentley Motors Deal

One of Verra’s first plastic credit projects is in Nairobi. TakaTaka Solutions, the country’s largest waste management company, sold credits earlier this year to luxury carmaker Bentley Motors. The sale allows Bentley to claim it is “net zero plastic to nature.” The deal was supported by the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, which is incidentally funded by oil majors producing plastics on an industrial scale.

TakaTaka says the revenue helps improve pay and conditions for workers. But at least 10 waste pickers interviewed for this story say they have not seen benefits.

“They’re cutting us out,” Njoroge says. “They take the good plastic straight from the source and leave us with scraps.”

Nairobi’s informal waste pickers, numbering in the thousands, are the backbone of Kenya’s recycling system. They sort and prepare materials that machines cannot handle, keeping tonnes of plastic out of the environment every day.

But as private firms intercept valuable waste earlier in the chain, pickers like Gisore Nyabuti, chair of the Kenyan National Waste Pickers Welfare Association, say they are being edged out.

“TakaTaka is not helping,” Nyabuti says. “They recycle what is profitable and dump the rest. That is not a real solution.”

In a statement, TakaTaka’s CEO, Daniel Paffenholz, insists that over half of their plastic comes from buyback centres that work with informal pickers, and that collecting from residential areas is “safer and healthier” than working at dumpsites.

But critics like Neil Tangri of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) remain unconvinced: “They promise social benefits but deliver little.”

At the heart of the plastic credit debate is “additionality,” whether the credits pay for new work that wouldn’t have happened anyway.

A 2024 Fauna and Flora report found Verra’s rules allow credits to be issued for past recycling activities. This means companies can claim immediate environmental benefits for work already completed months or even years earlier.

“Waste pickers are already collecting everything saleable,” Tangri says. “Now these companies come in and take credit for what’s already being done, then sell that as guilt-free plastic to consumers in the West.”

The report also revealed that Verra offers no guarantee that credits will sell and that there is often a long delay before they are put on the market.

South Pole, the consultancy that brokered Bentley’s purchase, insists the TakaTaka project is compliant and manages all waste responsibly. But the South Pole itself faced a credibility crisis in 2023 for selling millions of carbon credits from a Zimbabwe forest project later deemed largely worthless.

Other Kenyan companies are eyeing the plastic credit market. Mr Green Africa, partly owned by Dow Chemical, is seeking Verra registration, saying credits could help it expand operations and improve pay for workers.

But activists warn that without strict oversight, these schemes could deepen inequality, funneling profits to multinational corporations while cutting out the informal workers who do most of the hard labour.

“These credits may benefit the same multinationals that are causing the plastic crisis,” says Tangri.

What is at Stake for Kenya

Kenya hosted the opening session of the UN plastic treaty talks in 2022, making it a symbolic leader in the global fight against plastic pollution. But the rise of plastic credits risks undermining that leadership, replacing real reduction targets with paper promises.

Back at Dandora, Njoroge surveys the endless horizon of discarded wrappers, broken toys, and detergent bottles: “Everything ends up here,” he says quietly. “And we are the ones left to deal with it.”

For Mutwol of Greenpeace, the bottom line is clear: “If you ask waste pickers what has changed since these projects started, they’ll tell you: nothing. No new money. No better conditions. Just more plastic.”