Buy tomatoes at almost any market in Harare and they will probably go into a flimsy plastic bag that, on paper, should not exist. Zimbabwe banned thin plastic packaging in 2010 and polystyrene takeaway containers in 2012. More than a decade later, both are still easy to find, and the country's plastic waste has kept growing.
A July 2026 investigation by Oxpeckers and the Southern Africa Accountability Journalism Project set out to find out why. Its answers point less to a lack of laws than to how little of the existing law has been used.
What the law says
Two regulations do most of the work. Statutory Instrument 98 of 2010 bans the manufacture, distribution and import of plastic packaging thinner than 30 micrometres, the so-called thin plastics, according to Oxpeckers.
Statutory Instrument 84 of 2012 went further, Oxpeckers reports. It banned polystyrene containers outright and, under Section 6, made producers responsible for setting and meeting waste prevention targets, backed by criminal penalties.
What has actually happened
The numbers do not look like a ban working. Oxpeckers estimates plastic waste grew from about 297,000 tonnes in 2010 to about 342,000 tonnes in 2026. Around 1.6 billion containers are put on the market each year, and only about 7.1 percent are formally recovered. For PET bottles, it reports 5,500 tonnes entering the market each quarter against 393 tonnes recovered.
On enforcement, the investigation found no prosecutions of producers under the ban. EMA told reporters that seizures and fines had been carried out in the past two years, but gave no names, dates, places, quantities or amounts, and did not confirm whether any producer has ever filed the waste prevention targets that Section 6 requires. Follow-up questions went unanswered.
EMA's position, through environmental education and publicity manager Amkela Sidange, was that extended producer responsibility is voluntary best practice. Environmental law lecturer Emerge Masiya of Great Zimbabwe University told Oxpeckers that Section 6 uses mandatory language, and that 15 years without prosecutions raises questions under the Administrative Justice Act.
The agency's record has been questioned before. A 2022 Auditor General's report found EMA issued 109 wetland enforcement orders between 2014 and 2019 and enforced none of them.
A regulation that says the opposite
One finding stands out. Oxpeckers reports that SI 84 contains a drafting error in its core thickness prohibition, reading "not less than 30 micrometres" where the intent was clearly the opposite, and that it has gone uncorrected for 13 years. It is a small phrase, but in a prosecution it is the kind of detail a defence lawyer would use.
The producer responsibility law that is waiting
Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, makes the companies that put packaging on the market pay for collecting and recycling it. It is the tool most countries now rely on to fund recycling.
In Zimbabwe, according to Oxpeckers, comprehensive draft regulations have been finalised, but are on hold by executive directive while the government reviews macroeconomic effects, with an ease of doing business push freezing new regulatory levies. Environment secretary Simon Masanga acknowledged an enforcement gap exists. Tendai Nyawiri, acting general manager of PET recycler PetrecoZim, put it simply: EPR cannot work if it is not legislated.
The contrast with the region is sharp. South Africa gazetted mandatory EPR regulations in 2021, and Kenya and Rwanda have binding frameworks. It is also a contrast with Zimbabwe itself: in May 2026, Oxpeckers reports, government fast-tracked Statutory Instruments 91 and 92, which put the polluter-pays principle into operation, within days.
The other side of the argument
There is a real case for caution. Producer fees are a cost that manufacturers pass on to shoppers, and Zimbabwean businesses already operate in a difficult environment. That is the reasoning behind the pause. The counter-argument, made by recyclers and environmental lawyers, is that the cost is already being paid, in blocked drains, flooding and, by EMA's own estimate reported by Oxpeckers, around 5,000 animals killed each year by plastic waste.
ZELA, the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association, has pointed out that EMA attributed the 2005 floods in Harare partly to drains blocked by plastic carrier bags. Anyone who has watched a storm drain overflow in the rainy season will recognise it.
What it means for you, and for recyclers
For households, the practical answer is still to refuse thin bags and polystyrene where you can and to separate bottles and containers for collection. For recyclers and buy-back centres, a working EPR system would be the biggest change in the market in years, because it would put money behind collection. Until the draft regulations are gazetted, most of that collection will keep depending on informal pickers and a handful of businesses.
The questions to watch are whether the EPR regulations come off hold, whether the SI 84 drafting error is fixed, and whether EMA begins publishing enforcement figures that can be checked.
Sources
- Pollution regulations flouted as Zimbabwe's plastic crisis deepens, Oxpeckers
- Proper plastic waste management is critical, Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association
Written by Rufaro
Plain-language guides to getting rid of anything in Zimbabwe, properly.
