Plastic waste into affordable quality eco-building products
Uganda is a growing economy with over 49 million people, 78% of whom are youth who are unemployed. Uganda generates over 600 metric tons of plastic waste daily, of which only 6% is collected. The other 94% is dumped into the landfill's polluted soil for agricultural activities, and some is burned, emitting carbon that is negatively contributing to climate change, hence releasing heat waves and affecting children. Green Home is a startup social enterprise that focuses on creating environmental awareness in communities and eliminating plastic waste pollution by collecting it and recycling it into affordable eco-building materials like eco-pavers, eco-bricks, and eco-foundation blocks, while also widening the horizons of youth, LRA, and women employment opportunities and introducing them to a creative industry.
In 2020, Green Home developed a formula that replaces concrete (cement) in construction materials with plastic waste normally found polluting the streets of Uganda. The superiority of the Green Home brick was identified when it was tested against a traditional concrete brick at the Ministry of Works and Materials in Uganda. That test revealed the Green Home Eco-brick held a maximum crushing load (KN) of 305 versus only 130 on a traditional brick. These results, which led local experts to imagine the possibilities of replacing normal concrete construction items with Green Home recycled building materials, such as bricks and pavers, are simply the beginning. Being able to produce construction materials that are nearly three times the strength of traditional concrete while removing plastic from the streets creates a market advantage that can allow Green Home to employ vulnerable individuals across Northern Uganda at fair wages for many years to come. The Green Home employment model focuses on not only providing direct, gender-equal, full-time employment but also internship opportunities for students.
In 2020, Green Home developed a formula that replaces concrete (cement) in construction materials with plastic waste normally found polluting our environment in Uganda. The superiority of the Green Home brick was identified when it was tested against a traditional concrete brick at the Ministry of Works and Materials/Property in Uganda. That test revealed the Green Home Eco-brick held a maximum crushing load (KN) of 305 versus only 130 on a traditional brick.
We use plastic waste instead of cement mixed with unfertile sand to bring us the standard mixture grade that we want.
Green Home is a startup social enterprise that focuses on: -
1. Creating environmental awareness in communities and eliminating plastic waste pollution.
2. Collecting plastic waste and recycling it into affordable eco-building materials like eco-pavers, eco-bricks, and eco-foundation blocks
3. Widening the horizons of youth, LRA survivors, and women's employment opportunities.
4. Introducing youth, LRA survivors, and women to a creative industry.
5. Avail the internship placement opportunities for university students in Uganda.
The Green Home Innovation Initiative is built by the communities where we are envisioning empowered and sustainable transformed communities free of plastic waste.
We are working with marginalized people like youth, street children, LRAs, and women in our plastic waste value chain while introducing them to the creative industries.
These marginalized groups of people earn income during the course of working with Green Home in the plastic waste value chain to take care of their families, especially women in Uganda.
When Green Home hires a woman, she will enable a girl child (her daughter) to go to school with the plastic waste revenue and prevent plastic waste from polluting our environment.
1. Endriko Bosco, the founder and operations director in charge of overseeing all the operations at Green Home, has a bachelor's degree in business development, research development, and project planning and five years of experience working in international business companies. He has traveled to many developed countries to learn how to recycle plastic waste into eco-building materials like bricks, tiles, pellets, and lumber.
2. Omona Simon Peter, the engineer and production manager in charge of ensuring the proper scaling of materials when recycling in the recycling unit, construction using eco-building materials, i.e., eco-bricks, eco-pavers, and eco-foundation blocks, has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, and project planning and six years of experience working in corporate construction companies. He has worked on a lot of construction projects in Uganda.
3. Akurwot Blessing Grace, the senior project manager in charge of overseeing all the planning and development of the projects at Green Home up to the project's completion, has a bachelor's degree in business development, and project planning and three years of experience working in business companies and non-profit organizations. She has traveled to many developed countries to learn more about project management.
4. Atimango Fiona, the senior finance manager in charge of overseeing all the planning and budgeting of the projects at Green Home up to the projects' completion, and keeping all the financial records, has a bachelor's degree in finance and accounting, is a Certified Public Accountant, and has three years of experience working in business companies and non-profit organizations.
5. Isaac Semwanga, the senior IT manager in charge of overseeing all the designing of the system, the repair and setting of computers at Green Home, and the security of all devices at Green Home, has a bachelor's degree in IT engineering and has four years of experience working in business companies and non-profit organizations.
6. Aber Becky, the waste manager in charge of overseeing all the plastic waste value chain, from collection, weighing, sorting, washing, and recycling at Green Home, and the operational health and safety in the plastic waste value chain at Green Home, has a certificate in operational health and safety in the plastic waste value chain and has two years of experience working in recycling companies.
- Support informal communities in upgrading to more resilient housing, including financing, design, and low-carbon materials or energy sources.
- Uganda
- Pilot: An organization testing a product, service, or business model with a small number of users
10 WOMEN
2 LRA SURVIVORS
5 YOUTH/STREET CHILDREN
3 PEOPLE WITH DISABILITY
- Green Home is seeking capacity building support like proper Operational Health and Safety measures and technical skills in recycling.
- We are seeking for strong network for our international standards for our eco-building products.
- We are aiming at scaling our operation by purchasing a full recycling plant to allow us to recycle larger quantity of plastic waste and produce high quality and quantity of affordable eco-building products like eco-bricks, eco-pavers, and eco-foundation blocks.
- Business Model (e.g. product-market fit, strategy & development)
- Financial (e.g. accounting practices, pitching to investors)
- Human Capital (e.g. sourcing talent, board development)
- Monitoring & Evaluation (e.g. collecting/using data, measuring impact)
- Product / Service Distribution (e.g. delivery, logistics, expanding client base)
- Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design)
Green Home is a startup social enterprise that focuses on creating environmental awareness in communities and eliminating plastic waste pollution by collecting it and recycling it into affordable eco-building materials like eco-pavers, eco-bricks, and eco-foundation blocks, while also widening the horizons of youth, LRA, and women employment opportunities and introducing them to a creative industry. In 2020, Green Home developed a formula that replaces concrete (cement) in construction materials with plastic waste normally found polluting the streets of Uganda. The superiority of the Green Home brick was identified when it was tested against a traditional concrete brick at the Ministry of Works and Materials in Uganda. That test revealed the Green Home Eco-brick held a maximum crushing load (KN) of 305 versus only 130 on a traditional brick. These results, which led local experts to imagine the possibilities of replacing normal concrete construction items with Green Home recycled building materials, such as bricks and pavers, are simply the beginning. Being able to produce construction materials that are nearly three times the strength of traditional concrete while removing plastic from the streets creates a market advantage that can allow Green Home to employ vulnerable individuals across Northern Uganda at fair wages for many years to come. The Green Home employment model focuses on not only providing direct, gender-equal, full-time employment but also internship opportunities for students.
- In the next five years, Green Home aims to recycle 5 to 15 tons of plastic waste per day while constructing the whole house with eco-building products like eco-bricks, eco-lumber, eco-tiles, and eco-roofing tiles.
- Creating employment opportunities for over 350 to 600 marginalized people, like youth, street children, LRA survivors, and women in the community.
- We expect to reduce the housing deficit by 60% in the next five years due to our 10% discount on eco-building products.
- Reducing the cement carbon footprint by 70% to 80% due to the interlocking idea of our eco-interlocking bricks.
- We are signing partnership agreements with government bodies and NGOs that support the construction projects of girls' washrooms, maternity wards, classrooms, houses for people with disabilities in society, schools, health clinics, and refugee resettlement camps for the supply of eco-bricks for their construction projects.
- We also plan to introduce rent-to-own schemes in Uganda to address the housing deficit, whereby we are giving a 10% discount on our eco-building materials so that people in Uganda can afford to build their dream houses.
- We sell our eco-products to a persuaded population that is interested in joining the fight against plastic waste pollution in Uganda by buying our eco-building materials to complete their building projects.
- 1. No Poverty
- 5. Gender Equality
- 6. Clean Water and Sanitation
- 9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
- 11. Sustainable Cities and Communities
- 13. Climate Action
- 14. Life Below Water
- 15. Life on Land
1. Green Home has signed a memorandum of understanding with Easy Housing, which builds houses using timbers in refugee resettlement camps, for the supply of eco-foundation blocks for their housing foundations due to our eco-product being impenetrable by termites and waterproof.
2. We are signing partnership agreements with government bodies and NGOs that support the construction projects of girls' washrooms, maternity wards, classrooms, houses for people with disabilities in the society, schools, health clinics, and refugee resettlement camps for the supply of eco-bricks for their construction projects.
3. We also plan to introduce rent-to-own schemes in Uganda to address the housing deficit, whereby we are giving a 10% discount on our eco-building materials so that people in Uganda can afford to build their dream houses.
4. We sell our eco-products to a persuaded population that is interested in joining the fight against plastic waste pollution in Uganda by buying our eco-building materials to complete their building projects.
We are aiming for the government housing programs in Uganda, for which we intend to take on the whole construction project using our eco-building materials. We are trying to change the community's mindset from seeing waste as waste to seeing waste as untapped resources that are polluting our environment and can pay our bills.
Uganda is a growing economy with over 49 million people, 78% of whom are youth who are unemployed. Uganda generates over 600 metric tons of plastic waste daily, of which only 6% is collected. The other 94% is dumped into the landfill's polluted soil for agricultural activities, and some is burned, emitting carbon that is negatively contributing to climate change, hence releasing heat waves and affecting children.
Green Home creates environmental awareness in communities and eliminates plastic waste pollution by collecting it and recycling it into affordable eco-building materials like eco-pavers, eco-bricks, and eco-foundation blocks, while also widening the horizons of youth, LRA, and women employment opportunities and introducing them to a creative industry.
In 2020, Green Home developed a formula that replaces concrete (cement) in construction materials with plastic waste normally found polluting the streets of Uganda. The superiority of the Green Home brick was identified when it was tested against a traditional concrete brick at the Ministry of Works and Materials in Uganda. That test revealed the Green Home Eco-brick held a maximum crushing load (KN) of 305 versus only 130 on a traditional brick. These results, which led local experts to imagine the possibilities of replacing normal concrete construction items with Green Home recycled building materials, such as bricks and pavers, are simply the beginning. Being able to produce construction materials that are nearly three times the strength of traditional concrete while removing plastic from the streets creates a market advantage that can allow Green Home to employ vulnerable individuals across Northern Uganda at fair wages for many years to come. The Green Home employment model focuses on not only providing direct, gender-equal, full-time employment but also internship opportunities for students.
With this Green Home, we are eliminating 70% to 80% of the cement carbon footprint in the construction concept by using plastic waste, which is found polluting our environment.
- A new application of an existing technology
- Ancestral Technology & Practices
- Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning
- Blockchain
- Uganda
- France
- Germany
- United States
- For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models
1. Green Home has signed a memorandum of understanding with Easy Housing, which builds houses using timbers in refugee resettlement camps, for the supply of eco-foundation blocks for their housing foundations due to our eco-product being impenetrable by termites and waterproof.
2. We are signing partnership agreements with government bodies and NGOs that support the construction projects of girls' washrooms, maternity wards, classrooms, houses for people with disabilities in society, schools, health clinics, and refugee resettlement camps for the supply of eco-bricks for their construction projects.
3. We also plan to introduce rent-to-own schemes in Uganda to address the housing deficit, whereby we are giving a 10% discount on our eco-building materials so that people in Uganda can afford to build their dream houses.
4. We sell our eco-products to a persuaded population that is interested in joining the fight against plastic waste pollution in Uganda by buying our eco-building materials to complete their building projects.
We are aiming for the government housing programs in Uganda, for which we intend to take on the whole construction project using our eco-building materials. We are trying to change the community's mindset from seeing waste as waste to seeing waste as untapped resources that are polluting our environment and can pay our bills.
- Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)
Green Home is working heavily behind the scenes to acquire a full recycling plant that will give us the ability to recycle larger quantities of plastic to produce high-quality and large quantities of eco-building materials, which will automatically sustain our business through selling our affordable products, signing contracts with governments and NGOs that support the construction project in schools, communities, refugee settlements, and other NGOs that support the construction of houses for people with disabilities.
Green Home has signed a memorandum of understanding with Easy Housing, which builds houses using timbers in Rhino refugee resettlement camps, for the supply of eco-foundation blocks for their housing foundations due to our eco-product being impenetrable by termites and waterproof.