Kenyan women's 2021 startup recycles plastic waste into bricks that are 5 times stronger than
An absolutely brilliant young woman in Kenya has set up a company that produces bricks from recycled plastic.
Nzambi Matee says she was “tired of being left out” as officials in the capital city of Nairobi battled plastic waste. That's why the materials engineer created a product that is 5 to 7 times stronger than concrete. Matee, founder of Gjenge Makers, which transforms plastic waste into durable building materials, also designed the machines used to make the bricks in her factory.
Gjenge Makers receives low and high density polyethylene and polypropylene dumps free of charge from local packaging plants and manufactures a variety of different pavers after the plastic polymer has been heated and mixed with sand. “There is waste that they can no longer process; they cannot recycle. That's what we have,” Matee told Reuters. The result is a range of versatile building materials that are pressed into various thicknesses through a hydraulic machine and sold in a variety of colors that cost an average of $7.70 per square meter.
To date, it has employed more than 110 people and helped produce around 1500 bricks every day. She told Reuters that they have recycled about 20 tons of plastic waste since the company was founded in 2018. It expects to add a much larger production line very soon, which will triple its production capacity.
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