Can circular entrepreneurship reshape Kenya’s waste economy?

In this episode, Richard Kainika (Kenya Association of Waste Recyclers), David Ongare (National Environment Management Authority), and Hanna Dittmeyer (AHK Services Eastern Africa Ltd) share how Kenya is building circular systems from the ground up through informal networks, selective regulation, and everyday business ingenuity.

From secondhand markets and plastic recycling to extended producer responsibility and policy enforcement, Kenya’s circular economy is already in motion. But challenges remain, especially in waste infrastructure and electronic waste management.

Recorded live in Kenya, this episode opens the Circularity.fm series on circularity in Kenya, spotlighting how local actors are turning waste into value and shifting systems from the bottom up.

Video Impression

People

David Ongare, Director Compliance at NEMA Kenyan’s National Environment Management Authority.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-ongare/

Hanna Dittmeyer, Head of the Competence Centre Energy, Environment and Sustainable Economy of the AHK Services Eastern Africa Ltd at Kenya Association of Waste Recyclers.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hanna-dittmeyer/

Richard Kainika,  Secretary General of the Kenya Association of Waste Recyclers.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-kainika/

Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/

Chapters

00:00 Kenya at a glance
06:02 Circular Economy in Kenya
08:42 Circular Economy Regulation in Kenya
14:49 Plastic Waste – Where it comes from and where it goes
20:33 Informal Sectore and Entrepreneurship as drivers of change
24:02 Getting Started
25:44 Outro

About

Richard Kainika is Secretary-General of the Kenya Association of Waste Recyclers, the umbrella body for private sector companies recovering value from waste through recycling, refurbishment, composting, and related activities.

David Ongare is Director of Compliance at Kenya’s National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), the government’s lead agency for supervising and coordinating environmental matters under the Environmental Management and Coordination Act.

Hannah Dittmeyer heads the Competence Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainable Economy at the Delegation of German Industry and Commerce for Eastern Africa, which supports bilateral business relations and circular economy ventures across Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Further Links

https://nema.go.ke/#

https://pureplanetrecyclers.com

https://kenia.ahk.de/en

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kenya at a glance

Hanna Dittmeyer: circular systems already exist, and they can be scaled and formalized into viable business models. Waste has value. Everything that can be reused, upcycled, or turned into money, will not land in the landfill here, and with enthusiasm and drive, a lot can be achieved.

Patrick Hypscher: Kenya’s cities are growing by the hour, but systems and standards are keeping pace. In the next half hour, we will see how selective rules and everyday entrepreneurship can close that gap. It’s a kickoff to our series about circular entrepreneurship in Kenya.

My name is Patrick Hypscher And this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.

Patrick Hypscher: Kenya is rich in nature. Coastlines, Highlands, fertile land and rich in social capital. A young, inventive population with repair and reuse baked into daily life. Yet the linear take, make waste model still steers too many decisions. Today we look at how selective regulation and practical entrepreneurship flip that script.

Patrick Hypscher: Hanna, what’s the name of the two

Hanna Dittmeyer: Kenya and Germany.

Patrick Hypscher: How many people live in these

Hanna Dittmeyer: 57 Million and 84 Million.

Patrick Hypscher: What’s the average age of the people living there?

Hanna Dittmeyer: 20 years and 45.3 years.

Patrick Hypscher: Wow. What’s the biggest city and the number of inhabitants I.

Hanna Dittmeyer: Nairobi with around 5 million, probably more, and Berlin with around 3.6 million.

Patrick Hypscher: Kenya is slightly larger than France, yet its population is slightly smaller, comparable to italy’s .

What’s the total length of the train network?

Hanna Dittmeyer: Kenya with around 2,700 kilometers, but only more or less 800 operational and Germany with around 33,000 kilometers.

Patrick Hypscher: Impressive. What’s the GDP per capita?

Hanna Dittmeyer: 2000 USD and 54,000 USD.

Patrick Hypscher: And what was the GDP growth in 2023?

Hanna Dittmeyer: 5.6 for Kenya, and I have the newest number for Germany, which was zero.

Patrick Hypscher: Hanna Dittmeyer is the go-to person for foreign companies starting their circular business journey in Kenya. She works for the delegation of German industry and commerce for Eastern Africa. In her role as head of Competence center energy environment, and sustainable economy. She knows the written rules.

She knows the unwritten rules, and she knows the people to talk to to get started. Hanna´ gives us an introduction to Kenya.

Hanna Dittmeyer: So we would always say that Kenya is, a more diversified and rather resilient economy, especially comparing IT regionally has quite a strong services sector. And it also acknowledges the very important role of the manufacturing sector.

also a lot of multinationals have their East African headquarters in Nairobi, so this could be companies like Google, Microsoft, but also BASF, Bayer, Siemens, Merck and so on.

And uh, of course Kenya is part of the East African community, which is a customs union. That has a vision of regional integration. Um, yeah. And, uh, Kenya with Mombasa, um, being the Port is quite well positioned for accessing more than 300 million people in the market.

Patrick Hypscher: People are the key dimension here. There are 42 recognized ingenious tribes in Kenya, and when you’re there, you feel the community spirit. But Kenya is well connected to the global economy. Many international companies have a central hub in Nairobi. Why is that ?

Hanna Dittmeyer: Historical reasons, could be one of them because, as an ex-British colony, the level of English is very, very good in Kenya. So you find, um, labor here quite easily. People are, often very well, well-educated. Um, so companies can find the technical staff here, but also for higher positions. and, I think, geographically positioned, and Kenya is not a landlock. Country, it has ported access with Mombasa, with, LAPSSET coming in, in Lamu. So yeah, just geographical positioning as well.

Patrick Hypscher: Yeah. And what role does the mindset, uh, maybe also behavior. Of, um, the Kenyan population play.

Hanna Dittmeyer: Of course. With, with a median age of 20, uh, so very young population, you, you feel that reflected. So it’s super fast, network driven, you know, people hunt for opportunities. You have quick. Deals. You have lots of WhatsApp groups where things are happening, popup ventures and uh, what people call site hustling over here.

So I know a lot of people that have more than three business cards for all of their site hustles, you know, so young population. They put, uh, yeah, the, this kind of digital first population. Um, yeah, lots of things happening online and on the go.

And, uh, what I find also important is that people don’t mind failing or trying. So there’s quite a high tolerance I would say, for, for having tried it out and maybe it, it works and otherwise I do something else and there’s maybe less of a societal pressure that it has to work.

Patrick Hypscher: You can find the entrepreneurial spirit everywhere in Kenya. Entrepreneurship is the theme of this series. However, it’s not random entrepreneurship. We are interested in the circular economy, so let’s look at that.

[00:06:02] Circular Economy in Kenya

Patrick Hypscher: Where do you see like circular economy thinking and doing already applied in Kenya?

Hanna Dittmeyer: Um, since there is quite a market for secondhand, for example, appliances, yeah. You have these informal repair, um, practices. You have reuse economics, um, for clothing, for electronics, also for cars. Um, I would say most of my Kenyan colleagues would’ve bought a secondhand laptop in their life or secondhand, maybe car batteries.

Um, then overall, for example, if you look at the plastic sector, you see plastic waste being collected, strategy reused or exported, right?

Patrick Hypscher: Hanna estimates plastic recycling at eight to 10%. However, the remarkable figure is that around 70% of the collection and sorting is done by the informal sector. The informal sector is something I heard a lot about in Kenya. Let’s unpack that.

Hanna Dittmeyer: So I think what is often surprising for people is that when I mean informal sector, I don’t mean people that are self-employed, that is still something else. I talk about the frameworks in which they operate. So these are people that work without being acknowledged by the taxation system.

These are also people that might work without licenses. So these are people that depend on a daily livelihood, right? Um, they work in order to bring money back home to their families, and this is on a day-to-day basis. So they operate below any, um, other radar. They’re not employed anywhere. They don’t have any social security.

 And now, um, some of the statistics say that around 70% of Kenya’s economy is. Informal. So we are talking about a lot of people,

Patrick Hypscher: Meeting people from the informal sector is easy. I went to a place where you cannot miss them. In the next episode, I’ll take you on a tour of Dandora Dump site in Nairobi, which is the largest landfill in East Africa and one of the largest in the world.

People of every age come here to find metal, plastics, and glass that they can turn into cash, mostly with their bare hands and without any protection against the poisonous gases. Moms pick waste here to buy food for their babies. Teenagers do it over the weekend to earn some money, and for many people, it’s how they make a living.

Patrick Hypscher: A fair share of the waste is plastic. It is one of the main challenges in Kenya for a couple of years. It also has been subject to regulation. Let’s get a short history of circular regulation in Kenya.

[00:08:42] Circular Economy Regulation in Kenya

David Ongare: first there is always the need to align again with the global thinking, because we are part of the global community.

But unfortunately also with our current developments of globalization, we have also had a lot of rapid urbanization. Which has brought about new challenges and new stream of waste, which we never used to deal with before.

Patrick Hypscher: David Ongare is director compliance at NEMA Kenyan’s National Environment Management Authority. Everywhere I go, people know Nema and David is a veteran in the field of circular economy policy in Kenya.

David Ongare: We have the single carrier plastic ban here since 2017. And, we also now have the extended producer responsibility regulation. So if you look at this regulations they introduce important elements. For example, for the plastics, what are the minimum recyclable content that we should have. So this will will help to build the industry with regard to the recycling practices, uh, within the country.

But the extended producer responsibility, regulat regulation then makes sure that producer takes care of their products throughout the life cycle of the product but also ensures that proper collection is done. And then the various components can be reintroduced into the markets, maybe through up products or other products.

Patrick Hypscher: EPR or extended producer responsibility is a concept we will return to later in this series. In my conversation with Alex Musambi from African Collect Textiles and sarah Njau from Green Forest Solutions, we will discuss the EPR and textiles, but we don’t discuss it in isolation.

As millions of tons of textiles from Europe get shipped to Kenya, we will discuss the need for connecting European EPRs with African ones. More about that later.

David Ongare: So I think these new laws, help us also deal with the alignments we have because now we are getting to a point of over dumping and our landfills are becoming in full. we also are allowed that, uh, these new kinds of waste also might end up having higher impacts than the traditional kind of things we have been dealing with.

But of course it might be inevitable at some point that you wanna do some additional land filling or waste to energy projects. But I think we are looking at avoidance and reuse and recycling as the preferred options at the moment.

Patrick Hypscher: Can you give some examples of the waste streams that are new?

David Ongare: the biggest problems with waste teams now are mostly in the waste, electrical and electronic equipment. Where we have components, uh, now, uh, causing a challenge here like the, the CRTs, which we don’t have the capacities to manage here.

And although valuable also, we have had overuse of single use plastic carrier bags and so on. So we are seeing an emergency where, of course, as, as our communities also become more affluent, now we are seeing that these ones are starting to pose a big problem

and we can’t have people, uh, disposing of them in any place or mixing them with other traditional waste. So these are, these are pressing problems for us now with the components of electrical equipment, which we cannot manage.

Patrick Hypscher: On paper and in practice that’s bans plus producer responsibility. On the electronic equipment we’ll have two episodes later in this series, E Waste Initiative, Kenya or EWIK in the outskirts of Nairobi, collects and repairs a wide variety of electronics. And close the gap. Came here, refurbish and resells used computers.

To close the digital literacy gap, and they don’t stop here because they’ve built an impact up at Kenya’s coast that serves as an incubator for new circular economy startups. But you will learn more about that later. Let’s return to EPRs and what they cover today.

David Ongare: The the initial target was mostly on packaging materials.

Then of course, then apart from the packaging materials, we were looking also at the products themselves. And then we also have other areas which are a bit ambitious because we are covering even motor vehicles and other mobile. But I think our key priority areas was on the packaging material because, before if you came to my country, we were over packaging, but now it makes sure that we cover aspects of the packaging and the products themselves.

Patrick Hypscher: So Kenya has a plan. Now it needs to be implemented and this needs action on multiple layers.

David Ongare: ​so that it’s not only coming from government, but, but also the citizens have an acting voice here. We have a color code now for, for waste, so that waste can cannot be mixed. So from the homestead, the waste is in different fractions for ease of collection and reuse. Our challenge now is to set up this, enhanced material recovery facilities, so that we can scale up, , the visions of where we want to go. So, at the moment, this is the discussion we have done, the, the general models and what we need to, or how we conceptualize a material recovery facility to be and how to operationalize this.

Patrick Hypscher: The hard part is actually standing up material recovery facilities and making the models operational so the trash bin color code has somewhere real to go.

In the episode after next, I will talk to Daniel Paffenholz, owner and managing director of Taka Taka Solutions. Taka Taka is Nairobi’s most prominent waste collector and recycler. They turn waste into fertilizer and recycled plastics because plastic waste is an issue in Kenya.

[00:14:49] Plastic Waste – Where it comes from and where it goes

Patrick Hypscher: if we look into the bins, what are the most popular, plastic items we will find there?

Richard Kainika: In Kenya, the top three liter. From plastic would be on top, would be the, the, the water bottles or PET bottles, for soft drinks.

Then we also have single use plastic like, propylen and containers. Normal ordinary containers like HDP containers from kitchen cookie oil, daily products, detergent and shampoos. ETC.

Patrick Hypscher: This is Richard Kainika. Every recycling professional in Kenya knows Richard. He’s an entrepreneur who started his own recycling operations. It grew and grew, and now he’s the Secretary General of the Kenya Association of Waste Recyclers. Let’s return to the journey of plastics after consumption. What’s the current flow?

I.

Richard Kainika: Uh, so for starters, when, um, somebody, a consumer is done with the packaging. Usually, it depends. it is supposed to be put in a bin and, not every Kenyan would do that. So some will throw them immediately. They are done with them. Maybe they are driving or walking, or wherever they are. Of course we have those, , who would put it in the bin.

, but basically what happens is that once the consumer is done with the product, it’s collected. currently we are doing about 30 to 35% collection, which is a good improvement from what we are doing some time back. So, , the system is corrected and, uh, then moves to through the , the informal system, then to processing, , and, onward to recycling.

We have some fractions that are not collected as such. But, , as you asked, once the consumption is done, if it’s supposed to be collected, or thrown away into the environment, whatever is collected is, uh, uh, processed or taken to the landfill.

Patrick Hypscher: At the collection state, it kind of depends if I have a local collection, like a official or like an informal one who I pay to collect the bin.

Richard Kainika: Yeah, but, not all the time in a, a, maybe a, a a different way. Um, waste management is, the hands of the private sector. So the municipalities are not as active in Kenya as maybe, they’re supposed to be. So, , how waste is collected now depends one on the location of, , where the waste is generated.

, why? Because if it is an upper income, uh, residents for instance, , then you find that they are a bit regulated. They’re a bit formal, they would have bins, sometimes even separated bins. Therefore, and they would also have a contracted service provider who would come correct and proceed to engage with the waste as, , regulated.

Uh, but, in a different way. , let’s say for instance, in a need formal settlement, you find that some residential places don’t even have bins. So, uh, you find places with, communal. , waste receptor course where most times you find waste is put there without separation. And lastly, you have very informal areas where people, it already just litter the waste.

So how is the waste collected now? Depending on the location, if it is lit on the environment, then we also, we have waste pickers who walk around collecting waste only that now the waste that, , they collect is waste that is of no value. Is, is of value to them. Now the ones that don’t make, , , business sense, like, I mean, they don’t pick to clean the environment they pick to go and sell and to make some money out of that.

So if, for instance, a mixed, , like a multi-layer plastic material, like what I was saying was littering on the streets, then the waste speakers will not be picking that. So if there is no other system. Then that will have to be left in the environment. Then we have other areas like the, the, the, the, the one, the example that I said of, um, mixed, uh, being where they put everything together.

Oftentimes you find they have a regiment with the community based organization. This could be a group of , people within the area who will come collect the materials. Go and do, the manual separation and make sense of what is of value and what is not of value. Sometimes could be put in a collective place or the government, the, the municipality to come and collect, or they could as well take it to the bin, , to the dump site, or they could as well decide just liter. Then lastly, we have the upstream, the upper income areas where everything is done the right way. And, uh, what is recyclable is taken to the recyclers and what is not is taken to the dumpsite or to the landfill.

Patrick Hypscher: Dump sites and landfills pose a threat to Kenya’s rich, natural resources and the health of its people. Luckily, many entrepreneurs set out on a journey to turn trash into cash. During this series, we will meet a prominent one. Mr. Green Africa was one of the first to industrialize plastics recycling. Now they’re providing recycled plastics to FMCG brands and closing the loop.

Stay tuned for this deep dive.

[00:20:33] Informal Sectore and Entrepreneurship as drivers of change

Patrick Hypscher: What moves fastest here isn’t a grand master plan. It’s everyday entrepreneurship in an emergent economy. Thousands of small operating decisions add up a waste preneur who creates drinking glasses out of bottles. A taxi driver who starts a resell shop, a recycler who pins down a steady offtake.

Community networks lower risk and spread knowhow. When selective rules meet this kind of initiative, the system shifts from the bottom up. Over the next episodes, we’ll stay with the doers who turn that logic into livelihoods. Taxi Ventures an emerging startup from Kenya’s coast that is as circular as it gets.

The founder of Faith uses the leftovers from the fishery that would otherwise end up in the dump sites, yet she turns it into animal feeds and fertilizers. So value and nutritions stay in the local economy and feed a growing population.

And we will close the series with the entrepreneurial story that touched me most. What started with giving yoga sessions to women and slums turned into an unparalleled impact company. PadMad is taking post-industrial textile waste and creating reusable menstrual health products. It builds the basis for girls’ education, justice, and life indignity.

It reminds me of the privileges most of us experience and tend to forget.

David Ongare: waste In Kenya has been looked at as, a poor man’s business.

but we have seen that the, the people, the informal waste, uh, collectors have been able to. In a way, organize themselves in some kind of cooperative without any push from government.

And we can see that, that within that space they have been able to organize and, and innovate and in a way bring another segment, which was not part of the, the, the normal government, uh, structure.

Also we are looking at these people coming up with the alternatives for materials with a smaller footprint to the environment.

And therefore, I know that this is maybe not the traditional issue in, uh, in Europe, but we have many informal, people who pick waste ordinarily. And we are seeing that now. They’re also trying to make their own products and sell, and I think this is an important lesson experiment for us.

Richard Kainika: Our Kenya informal sector is, we call it all hot sun. It’s a lingo for working under the sun, you know, working by yourself without help and without any system and enforcement of the public sector and the informal sector is self-driven. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s like you and your wife and your children contributes to other business.

And, uh, that business depends entirely on you. You have no support from the bank. You have support from. I mean, it’s a business that you are supporting and the risks are tremendous. So the informal sector and the fact, the, the way it happens in Kenya that there will be your partnership. We, I mean, at the end of the day, you find comprehensive recycling happening in Kenya. Uh, despite being informal, it demonstrates, impressive efficiency

[00:24:02] Getting Started

Patrick Hypscher: If you got excited about starting your circular journey in Kenya, this is what you need to keep in mind.

Hanna Dittmeyer: We would always say, test it small. Yeah. So do a small pilot or joint venture, um, just to test the pricing, test your supply chains. how are your consumers reacting, right? always use a local business partner, so don’t try to go by yourself. there’s lots of things that somebody wouldn’t know about how the market operates and who you need to talk to, so make sure that.

You have that local person or, or company also, especially when you want things to move very fast and you just don’t know why it takes so long, right? So this is, this is the, the way to do it so that you don’t lose patience, but you have somebody that explains it to you, which I’m always very happy, you know, if I’m struggling with something and I have a Kenyan colleague who explains it to me, focus on urban markets first.

So Nairobi and, and Mombasa, maybe as one of the other one. you have higher purchasing power and you often have a bit higher awareness levels, , on circularity, and anything around, waste management. So those would be my next one. And then, . It doesn’t matter how big or small you are, you need to have as a company, you need to have your financing situation clear.

, because that is what people will ask. And if you want to sell something into the market, , you have to have financing options for people available that cannot afford the. Full price upfront. So yeah, everything around pay as you go or leasing to own, you know, anything around this and how you can make that possible and what are the right prices to set.

[00:25:44] Outro

Patrick Hypscher: Kenya’s landscape and optimism are real assets. The linear model is the constraint and practical entrepreneurship. Supported by selective and forceable rules is the way through. In the coming episodes, we’ll stand inside those solutions from Pandora dump site to plastics, textiles, it refurbishment women’s health and the blue economy.

We’ll watch waste turn into value while securing the precious communities and nature Kenya is gifted with.

My name is Patrick Hypscher And this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.

Patrick Hypscher: This marked the kickoff to our series on circular entrepreneurship in Kenya. Next week I’ll take you on a tour through Kenya’s largest dump site and the slums around it. Let’s build a profitable circular economy, and please don’t forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination.