To participate in the event, the selected social enterprise leaders underwent six months of training in waste management. The startups, which operate in six countries in East Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi), were trained by the Yunus Environment Hub GrowUp incubator. This is a global network of social enterprises that creates solutions to the environmental crisis.
The digital demo day will be held on October 7th, 2021 online. According to the Yunus Environment Hub network, co-founded and led by Professor Muhammad Yunus, the day will be a highlight of the mobilization on innovative waste management solutions, which represent a resource, still largely untapped in the East African sub-region. “Our vision is to create a world with three zeros: zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero net carbon emissions,” says Yunus Environment Hub.
Promoting plastic waste recycling
Among the solutions to be presented on October 7th, 2021, is the recycling of plastic waste into eco-bricks and paving stones, developed by start-ups Aheza Iwacu in Burundi, Arena Recycling Industry in Tanzania and Eco Brixs in Uganda. Ugandan start-up Biha Eco Venture mixes plastic waste with eggshell powder to produce roof and floor tiles.
Also on the plastic waste front, “Coast Redwood fills a gap in the Nairobi (Kenya) recycling market by providing recyclers with high-quality plastics sorted by color and type, and Yo-Waste offers communities in Kampala (Uganda) an app that connects waste collectors and generators to make the job easier,” says Yunus Environment Hub.
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Organic waste produced by households can also be used to produce fertilizer for agriculture. This will be the argument of start-ups Seas in Uganda and MASSP Recycling, which provides sanitation services in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, by installing mobile toilets in the town. The other selected start-up is Reco. The start-up operates under a franchise model in Mombasa, Kenya, providing its waste collectors with branded PPE (personal protective equipment) and building recycling capacity and waste transfer stations where the recyclables brought in are sold to recyclers and manufacturers.
For more information about the event online, click here.
Ines Magoum