Using her ingenuity and engineering skills, Nzambi Matee found a way to help the environment by converting plastic waste into building materials.
In 2017, Matee opened a factory in Nairobi called Gjenge Makers, where workers take plastic waste, mix it with sand, and heat it up, with the resulting brick being five to seven times stronger than concrete. The factory accepts waste that other facilities “cannot process anymore, they cannot recycle,” Matee told Reuters.
“Our product is almost five to seven times stronger than concrete,” said Matee, the founder of Nairobi-based Gjenge Makers, which transforms plastic waste into durable building materials.
“There is that waste they cannot process anymore; they cannot recycle. That is what we get,” Matee said, strolling past sacks of plastic waste.
Matee gets the waste from packaging factories for free, although she pays for the plastic she gets from other recyclers.
Her factory produces 1,500 bricks each day, made from a mix of different kinds of plastic.
These are high density polyethylene, used in milk and shampoo bottles; low density polyethylene, often used for bags for cerals or sandwiches; and polypropylene, used for ropes, flip-top lids and buckets.
But she does not work with polyethylene terephthalate or PET, commonly used for plastic bottles.
The plastic waste is mixed with sand, heated and then compressed into bricks, which are sold at varying prices, depending on thickness and colour. Their common grey bricks cost 850 Kenyan shillings ($7.70) per square metre, for example.
Matee, who designed her own machines, said her factory has recycled 20 tonnes of waste plastic since its founding in 2017.
She plans to add another, bigger, production line that could triple capacity, and hopes to break even by year end.
Matee set up her factory after she ran out of patience waiting for the government to solve the problem of plastic pollution.
“I was tired of being on the sidelines,” she said.
