Kenya upcycling: recovering value from waste

by | Dec 3, 2019

The two-year UK Aid-funded WasteAid initiative in Kenya is helping an entire community move towards zero waste. This update has been provided by our project managers, Duncan Oloo and Moses Noah.

It’s now close to one year of implementing the zero waste initiative with support from WasteAid. KMEG (the Kwa Muhia Environmental Group), a community based organisation in Kenya, has been working together with Kwa Muhia community to address the household wastes at source by providing waste segregation bins for the community to use.
These bins are helping KMEG source all types of wastes needed for recycling and for reuse. The practice is gaining ground with many members of community and other stakeholders appreciating our work.

1 Recyclables (blue bin): includes all recyclable materials e.g. metal cans, glass bottles and jars, milk packets and many more dry materials.

2 Biodegradables (green bin): includes kitchen refuse and vegetable waste.

3 Disposable waste (red bin): includes waste that cannot be addressed at any given point e.g. diapers and pampers.

Now in the fourth quarter of our funding, based of our waste generation survey report, we have managed to reduce up to 80% of the non-organic wastes from a baseline of 780kg generated daily. This involves HDPE (high density polyethylene bottles), other plastics, glass bottles, aluminum cans, tetrapaks, vehicle tyres and scrap metals all converted into useful products now on sale with a stock value of more than $1,300 and $932.39 cash received.

We target local markets through partnerships with stakeholders, networking and participating in exhibitions to showcase our products.

We also conduct training and capacity building for our community and young children towards realising waste as a resource. We share recycling skills with our team and provide opportunities to practice.
Moses said: “I was working with school kids and we decided to clean the village. The main idea was to help them to identify different type of waste and how to segregated them. Also, we wanted to see how creative they were when it came to innovation by making protective and safety gears from available material so as to promote recycling.”
We are planning to expand the range of our waste processing activities by introducing a biodigester unit to turn organic (food) waste into biogas and fertiliser. This will provide another income stream which will not only help KMEG achieve its zero waste plans but also help the community get cheap and clean cooking fuel.

By supplying biogas for cooking fuel, we will reduce demand for charcoal and firewood, helping reduce deforestation and the release of harmful emissions to the environment.

The fertiliser will be sold to local farmers.

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