The Fight Against Malaria
597,000 deaths in 2023 alone*
263 million new Malaria cases worldwide in 2023*
Agriculture
Project EOLIN (End-of-Life Insecticide Nets): Creating a Circular Economy in Malaria Prevention
From Life-Saving Nets to Sustainable Solutions
In vulnerable communities worldwide, predominantly in Sub-Saharan Africa, insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) save millions of lives. However their afterlife tells a different story: While ITNs stand at the frontline in the fight against malaria, they also accumulate as plastic waste once they’re no longer serviceable against malaria. Recognizing this challenge, together with global organizations and local implementation partners, BASF launched Project EOLIN.
*World malaria report 2024: addressing inequity in the global malaria response. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2024. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.
In 2017 BASF launched Interceptor® G2 insecticide-treated nets
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But what happens to the nets once they are no longer serviceable against malaria?
ITNs are indispensable in the fight against malaria. But once these nets are no longer serviceable against malaria, many are used for unintended purposes, become plastic waste, or are burned.
To ensure that a crucial public health campaign to bring ITNs to vulnerable communities does not come at an unintended environmental cost, multiple stakeholders have joined forces to launch Project EOLIN (end-of-life insecticide nets). The end-of-life ITNs are collected to not only minimize the environmental impact of malaria prevention plastics but also to feed them into a new cycle of value for communities and shape a circular economy.
With global partners and local communities, Project EOLIN lessens the environmental impact of end-of-life ITNS while creating a new cycle of value by recycling and repurposing these nets.
What began with a Proof of Concept (PoC) in Cross River State, Nigeria, was followed by a pilot project in Jigawa State, which concluded with much better results, confirming that collectability of end-of-life ITNs and a recovery target of at least 20 percent is achievable.
Roughly 78 percent of households in Jigawa State had end-of-life ITNs. Approximately 15,000 end-of-life ITNs were recovered during the pilot, amounting to about 7.5 metric tons of plastic that can be recycled and repurposed. If incinerated, these ITNs could have released around 22 metric tons of CO2 into the environment.
*Potential CO2 savings of 1.2105 kg CO2e prevented/kg plastic recycled:
Garcia-Gutierrez, P., Amadei, A.M., Klenert, D., Nessi, S., Tonini, D., Tosches, D., Ardente, F. and Saveyn, H., Environmental and economic assessment of plastic waste recycling A comparison of mechanical, physical, chemical recycling and energy recovery of plastic waste, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2023, doi:10.2760/0472, JRC132067.
Potential credit value of $40/MT ($0.04/kg CO2e prevented):
World Bank. 2023. State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2023. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi: 10.1596/978-1-4648-2006-9. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Listening closely to the communities’ needs
In addition to community awareness of ITN distribution campaigns, in the case of Jigawa State, one crucial success factor was the cooperation with the Waste Pickers Association of Nigeria (WAPAN). It was also important that the plastic waste was recycled into something that benefited the specific communities. In Jigawa, a local company would turn the collected plastic into prayer mats, as Northern Nigeria is predominantly Muslim. With this initiative, roughly 41 percent of the CO2 emissions that would have been generated by the incineration of the nets were avoided. However, this approach to repurpose the end-of-life ITNs must be highly specific to the region’s needs.
For example, the possibility of producing prayer mats was not an argument for communities in the Nigerian states of Ogun and Oyo with a larger Christian community to hand in end-of-life ITNs. During the pilot project in Ogun, 100% of plastic waste related to ITN product and packaging across all local government areas was recovered and brought to the distribution points to be recycled by local organizations.
On a mission for a sustainable future
One goal of Project EOLIN for BASF and its partners is to make this circular economy approach a Standard Operating Procedure for Nigeria’s malaria prevention campaigns. If continued pilots prove successful, Project EOLIN’s model could serve as a framework for nationwide application, with potential for future adaptation across other malaria-impacted regions.
By integrating the voices and needs of local communities into each phase of Project EOLIN, BASF and its partners remain committed not only to the fight against malaria but also to promoting sustainable practices and positive economic impact in the most vulnerable communities.
Aligns with Key UN Sustainable Development Goals
