Making roof tiles from waste in Nairobi

A few years ago the Kayole estate in Kenya's capital Nairobi suffered terribly from lack of facilities to deal with waste and as a result people were dumping their rubbish on the open ground. So bad was the problem that the waste was blocking sewage and water drainage systems, resulting in regular outbreaks of diseases such as malaria, typhoid and cholera.

In January 1999, however, 23 men and women from the area got together and formed the Kayole Environment Management Association (KEMA), to tackle the problem. Rather than simply working out a way of disposing of the waste, they tried to find ways of seeing the waste as a resource that could be used elsewhere more productively, and also could provide a source of wealth creation for the residents.

They came up with two schemes. The first, turning plastic waste into roof tiles for people's homes involves melting down waste plastics in a heating hopper before compressing and moulding them into the shape to make tiles. For the second scheme - processing waste paper into briquettes for use as fuel, waste paper collected from the estate's now weekly collections is shredded, moistened and then mashed together, before being compressed in a cylinder and left to dry for three days into a high density fuel briquette. This latter has had the additional benefit of reducing the pressure on Kenya's forests, which are being felled at an alarming rate, exacerbating climate change, worsening soil erosion and weakening biodiversity.

Over 100 people locally are now involved with the scheme, with 40 employed in the recycling project and earning a wage, while a further 4,500 residents have signed on to the waste management programme. Even Nairobi CIty Council has come to them for advice on how to deal with the city's waste issues. Meanwhile KEMA continues to diversify, and is now developing ways of generating woven products from polythane, and a community composting project.