Teacher whips plastic menace into cash and jobs for many

Githinji Kinyanjui was a university student when, a decade ago in 1999, he became a hawker selling polythene bags used for shopping to raise extra money for his upkeep.

A Second Year student at the University of Nairobi’s Kikuyu Campus at the time, he started the bags business with Sh20,000, “out of my small savings,” he says.

The young man who comes from a large family of now retired civil servant Robert Kinyanjui and Agnes Kinyanjui (now deceased), would travel to the city, buy plastic bags and the resell them to shopkeepers before going back to college with extra pocket money.

“I felt I needed to live a little more comfortably and become financially independent,” he says, adding that immediately he started the business, he no longer depended on pocket money from his parents.

“When they discovered what I was doing, they encouraged me to continue and to use the money wisely,” says the 33-year-old businessman from Nyeri during an interview with Money.

By the time he was graduating in 2001, his two-year-old venture was doing so well, that the graduate with a Bachelor of Education degree never bothered to join his teaching career.

However, years later in 2007 as his business prospered, the Government moved in and banned the sale of plastic papers, arguing the papers of a certain gauge were an environmental menace.

Environmentalists supported the ban, whose implementation plastic manufacturers fought for suspension successfully.

With his income tap now closed Mr Kinyanjui had to think fast, and it did not take him long: he switched from selling new plastic bags last June, and founded Green Africa International, which makes poles from plastic waste.

His concept was aimed at removing plastic papers permanently from the environment while earning himself a livelihood.

Today, his fast-growing 10-month-old business on Mombasa Road has not only attracted curious visitors including the National Environmental Management Authority director Muusya Mwinzi and Nairobi City Council director of environment Leah Oyake, but has provided rich material for a civil servant pursuing a doctorate degree on solid waste management.

Permanent

The business employs 14 permanent staff including procurement manager Lawrence Namayi and factory manager Patrick Warungu.

The young company has since bought its first car, which Mr Namayi uses to traverse Nairobi and its environs to buy waste and feed the 24-hour plant.

It has 10 collection centres in Eastlands and engages about 200 youth to sort out waste delivered by hundreds more youth, who include street families.

“We pay between Sh15 per kilogramme for dirty plastic and Sh25 for cleaner waste,” says Mr Namayi, also a relatively young manager.

Mr Kinyanjui says the factory makes between 70 and 100 poles a day and prices depend on size and thickness. The ordinary pole costs Sh400 and “on a good day we make about 100 poles, which translates to Sh40,000.”

They young entrepreneur does not want to be specific on the average profit the business makes, but says: “We are doing well. Business is good, I can’t complain. The wage bill is about Sh300,000, which includes electricity, salaries, water, rent and transport. We are able to do this comfortably and service loans, while ploughing back some money into the business for expansion. I am sure we can make more, but we have deliberately avoided marketing because we do not have the capacity to meet higher demand.”

To start the business, Mr Kinyanjui says, he initially had Sh300,000 which was way below budget, but with assistance from two local dealers in plastic materials he was able to borrow a second-hand machine worth Sh1.5 million, which he modified to use for moulding poles.

The business is now worth about Sh8 million according to the businessman.

And how did he come up with such a concept?

“Many companies recycle polythene papers back to the same use and the old plastic materials come back to pollute the environment.

Live with plastic

“I thought about how the menace could permanently be removed from the environment. We are in the age of polythene papers, just like we are in the age of computers. We must learn to live with plastic,” he says.

“I started the business like a hobby at college, now I have no capacity to meet demand for the poles. Right now, we have orders for 7,000 poles from farmers in Naivasha and Limuru and with a production of only 100 a day, you can imagine the limitation. We have more materials than the machine can handle because it is slow. Then there is the problem of persistent power blackouts. We need at least 10 new machines to produce about 1,000 poles daily,” says the young CEO.

He argues that with proper disposal systems, plastics waste should not be a major environmental problem.

“The problem is not in using plastic but how to dispose it. It becomes a problem to the environment because people misuse it,” he says, adding that people should be guided on how to dispose it.

“Since we must live with plastic, we must learn how to live with it responsibly. Banning the use of certain gauge of plastic materials is not the solution to the menace.”

He advises the youth to form groups to start collecting plastic waste “which guarantees them ready market.”

His company is ready to go and collect at least one tonne of plastic waste within Nairobi, Thika, Kajiado, Machakos and Naivasha.

Recently, it had waste delivered from Kerugoya, Eldoret and Mombasa.

“People should keep plastic separately and clean. There is ready market for plastic waste. We waste a lot of tree cover when we go for timber posts. People should turn to plastic posts and products.”

Mr Kinyanjui says the major obstacles to his venture include the high cost of doing business and outdated NCC by-laws, which mandate only the council to handle and dispose of waste materials at designated areas such as Dandora.

“We lack support from government agencies. Our aim is to capture plastic waste at the estates when it is still clean, before it is dumped at Dandora. But our workers, and the boys who supply us with the waste are harassed by city council officials, who claim they are coming to dump the waste here. We suggest the City Council give our boys identification badges.”

Mr Namayi says the sector has employed a lot of people directly and indirectly. “The City Council should know this and recognise our boys.”

Mr Kinyanjui says plastic poles have many advantages over wooden ones. “They are affordable, smart, long-lasting, termite-resistant, unbreakable and unlike wooden poles, nails are firmer on plastic poles.”

In a joint proposal, Green Africa International, Hi Plast and Eco Plast (the two firms that helped it purchase the machine), aim to establish about 28 recycling units countrywide, each with a capacity to recycle over 2,000 tonnes of plastic waste per month.

The Sh17.5 million project aims to create over 600 direct jobs at the recycling plants, 21, 000 at the satellite collection units, and over 200,000 jobs indirectly.

Mr Kinyanjui may not have studied business management, but he has already made his business grow at an impressive rate.

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