Waste recovery facility adopts circular economy in waste management

A material recovery facility at Kenyatta Road estate, Juja, has adopted a circular economy model of waste management.

Here, waste is collected weekly by waste service providers.

The waste generators segregate their waste and put it in coded bags before delivering it to waste service provider.

This has been made possible by the Sustainable Waste Management Act (2022) that has transformed the way waste is managed in the Kenya.

Before the enactment of the act, Kenya was managing waste using a linear model of waste management.

"Prior to the enactment of the law, a Kenya was managing waste through a linear waste management model. The waste would be mixed together, loaded onto a track and taken to a dump site. Dump site would be the first stop," said Dr Ayub Macharia, Director NEMA.

This is now changing to a circular economy whereby waste materials are retained in the loop or the system for as long as possible so that they are not lost.

According to the Act, waste generators are supposed to segregate waste at source before it is delivered to waste service providers.

Once all the segregated waste is collected, it is delivered to the waste recovery facility located within the estate.

In the Act, County governments are supposed to provide central collection centres for materials that can be recycled.

They are also required to establish Material Recovery Facilities for final sorting, segregation, composting and recycling of waste.

Once the waste is delivered in this facility it goes through the final sorting process.

"When waste reaches this facility, we separate organic, egg shells, plastics, nylon papers, metallic objects and we put them aside. The only waste we do not recycle here is sanitary towels and pampers. The rest we separate for recycling", said Grace, a trainer at the facility.

According to Dr Macharia, the ministry has developed a regulation to deal with materials that are not recyclable.

"Section 13 of Sustainable Waste Management Act (2022) requires all producers and importers of certain products and packaging to make sure that they take responsibility over those materials until they are properly disposed through extended producer responsibility," Said Dr. Macharia.

The organic waste is segregated, ground and fed to black soldier flies to generate organic fertilizer. The rest is composted.

The larva produced by the black soldier flies are dried and sold as animal protein.

Residual waste is returned back to the producers for a long term storage or disposal or landfill through the extended producer responsibility scheme.

Several lessons can be learnt from this material recovery facility.

1. Waste is a resource and should be segregated at the source instead of taking it to dump sites.

2. The facility can be replicated to other estates such that every estate to have a material recovery facility

3. Besides creating jobs, material recovery facilities can generate various streams of income through selling products generated from waste.

Only time will tell whether adoption of circular economy in waste management is the beginning of the death of dump sites in Kenya.