Ecoplastile-Turning Plastics into Wooden Timbers and Tiles

EcoPlastile is a registered social enterprise established to address the challenges of plastic pollution, urban waste management, unemployment, chronic poverty, deforestation and climate change. We accept low income households to exchange wastes with medical services or low cost floors, use waste plastic as a resource and we use energy efficient and chemical free extrusion process to manufacture eco-friendly plastic Ecopoles, lumber and Ecofloor tiles . The poles produced are have various applications ranging from fencing to road signage, to flooring and making furniture.

Solid waste management is one of the environmental challenges that many African cities are struggling to contain. In Kampala the Ugandan capital city only, over 28,000 metric tons of wastes is generated and over 25% of this is plastic, this represents only 40% of the total wastes generated in Kampala. The remaining un collected is normally dumped in un authorized areas. Thus littering on our streets, clogs our sewers, encroaching on people’s homes.

On the other hand, Uganda’s forest reserves are fast depleting due to the growing demand for timber used in building and construction (Uganda loses between 250,000 to 380,000 hectares of forests every year). Intensive logging over the years has reduced the country’s forest areas to less than 7% of the entire land mass, and many tree species are now on the endangered species list. If nothing is done quickly, Uganda would suffer irreparable environmental damages.

Furthermore, over 73% of Ugandans have houses with no cement floors because they are prohibitively expensive. These people live on unsanitary and dirt floors, which have shown to be a major cause of infectious diseases, respiratory illnesses, malnutrition, and vector-borne diseases, this has been associated with slow economic development. 

We work with youth and women in slum areas of Kampala and other major urban centers. These are areas that historically have been neglected by authorities on issues such as sanitation, education and health care. These areas have little economic activity leading to high unemployment. Life is generally desperate. About half are recent arrivals from the rural areas looking for better opportunities in the city. Most residents are youth (<35 years old). Many are married with children who are less than 5 years old. Literacy levels are low to median. Many young men in slums actively engage in politics, not for ideological reasons, but to receive occasional handouts from politicians. Being aware of their plight, we are able to engage members of our community in a way that uplifts their livelihoods socially and economically. These locals are allowed to exchange waste plastics for medical services and low cost floors in addition to selling to us plastic wastes. This enables them to live a decent life by sleeping on clean floors which were expensive at first for them and enables them access medical services in addition to better waste management alternatives.

In the midst of all these problems, we noticed that demand and price for timber posts was rising due to short supply. If only we could produce an alternative to timber that was nearly as strong, longer lasting, cheaper and environmentally sustainable, we could profit from the lucrative timber market while helping to save Uganda’s endangered forests.

Plastic waste provides the opportunity to create a better alternative to timber and other building hardware. Using plastic collected from the streets and landfills across the country, our business uses an energy efficient, and chemical free simple manufacturing technique known as injection molding to convert shredded and melted plastic into durable and environment-friendly posts and floor tiles (this creates jobs especially for the marginalized youths and women). The posts are be sold on the market and used as fencing posts, sign posts and for building and construction purposes and the floor tiles are used as alternative floors to cement and dirty floors for rural and slum Ugandans.

The business strategy is to create economic value on plastic at the points of generation to enable the households/farms/companies to sort and sell plastics in order to earn income. In this way, no plastic will find its way on to the streets. The plastics will be transformed into more durable plastic poles, lumber and floor tiles. The business has a big social economic and environmental impact as it generates employment opportunities directly and indirectly at the initial stages of the value chain, mostly youth and women, who collect, sort and clean plastic waste for reselling. By the 3rd year of operation, we aim to create 50 direct and over 100 indirect jobs, the company also aims at withdrawing over 1 million tons of plastic waste (reduce waste pollution) and transforms the waste into plastic poles , lumbers and floor tiles (reduce deforestation,  and public health problems).

We allow low income households to collect and exchange waste plastic for medical services under the Waste Medical Insurance scheme and low cost flooring for the poorest of the poor. This enables them to access the expensive medical services and enable them minimize on the risks of contracting vector born diseases by over 95% and the risk of diarrhea is reduced by over 45% in children below the age of 5 years.