Mr Green Africa

Every day, about half a million kilograms of plastic waste is dumped in Nairobi, Kenya. Plastic waste in Kenya often ends up in landfill, where waste pickers work under hazardous conditions to collect it. Work is frequently done without basic skills and tools, at unfair market prices, and workers are often excluded from social, financial and healthcare services.  

Mr Green Africa is an innovative circular economy company reshaping the plastic waste value chain to create tangible social, environmental and economic impact. It uses innovative technology to manage and streamline the collection and recycling of waste plastic, pays fair prices to registered and trained waste pickers, and supplies high-quality recycled and reusable plastic (PET) to local industry. 

Historically, waste collection and segregation in Kenya has been stigmatised – viewed as something done only by society’s most disadvantaged. Mr Green Africa conducted research into consumer behaviour around waste management and recycling in East Africa, in order to change such perceptions and create an operational model that addresses consumer needs.  

TRANSFORM funded the development and testing of new agent-based collection models to facilitate plastics collection directly from consumers and make waste reclaimers’ work safer, healthier and more secure.  

Funding and support from TRANSFORM has been critical in helping to launch the first packaging in East Africa made from 100 percent post-consumer recyclate that’s been fairly sourced from disadvantaged waste-picking communities and recycled locally.