My Green Home Rwanda

My Green Home is a social enterprise that is addressing the challenges of urban waste management. Accumulation of plastic waste has created a big challenge in Rwanda, despite serious measures to ban them, due to their very low biodegradability property and presence into big volumes. When plastic waste is not recycled it harms the soil, the water and the air we live in, this not only affects people in general but also it has put our planet at risk.

We creating an environmentally friendly product through the recycling of plastic waste into construction materials. Our goal is to create durable products from plastic waste, sustainably produced locally, using readily available skills and resources, creating green jobs.
We want to grow into a social enterprise that will revolutionize the construction industry in Rwanda, introducing first of its kind paving bricks produced from recycled plastic waste. 

Our work addresses one main issue in Rwanda: 

The issue of urban waste management challenges, especially here in Rwanda, we are both raising awareness about the proper disposal of plastic waste and recycling them into building materials.  Plastic waste is a global problem that is pressing, and we need to solve urgently. Plastic has been essential in our lives; hence, it is produced in vast quantities. Their accumulation has created a significant challenge in the world, due to their very low biodegradability property and presence into substantial volumes. When plastic waste is not recycled, it harms the soil, the water and the air we live in, this not only affects people in general but also it has put our planet at risk.

• Prospective household owners: people who currently make pavers are in the informal sector hence unprofessional and hard to deal with. The products are not durable and have not been tested in terms of quality.

• Engineers: They need to save time while searching for quality building materials. They struggle with local builders since most of them work in the informal sector. They find it hard to find both affordable, durable, and resistant materials.

• Construction industries: They need affordable materials so that they can be able to reduce their overall cost of production and increase client satisfaction.

With the recycled materials we are producing, we are creating affordable housing materials for middle-income earners in Kigali, adding that our materials are also durable and resistant. 

With this job creation, we also hope to see our employees being more independent and stable financially hence impacting their families and being secondary beneficiaries of our project.

My Green home is creating an environmentally friendly product through the recycling of plastic waste into construction materials. We are a recycling plant that produces eco-friendly pavers out of plastic waste mixed with sand, as a replacement for the use of cement and water. We are dedicated to environmental excellence, employing new technology and local labor to produce our innovative products that are helping solve pressing social economic and environmental challenges.

Our solution reduces the amount of plastic waste that is dumped in the Nduba landfill without getting recycled. This promotes environmental safety and excellence. We are able to create job opportunities and also promoting social and economic growth for the local communities around Kigali. On the long run, we also help our clients access resistant and ecofriendly products that help them save their money.

Our solution is innovative from the initial stage of manufacturing, raw materials to the final product. We blend plastic and sand instead of water, sand, and cement. The melted plastic replaces cement, and we mix with the sand, and the mixture produces the pavers. These pavers are eco-friendly and resistant compared to the conventional ones made out of cement.

Furthermore, to the technology employed, we use local labor and natural gas as a means for heating, making our whole production process ecofriendly. 

Instead of using cement, we replace it with melted plastic and mix it with sand. The bond between the plastic and the particles of sand is such strong that it can't easily tear over time.

The test made on our previous prototypes has shown that our recycled pavers likely to resist pressure and tear 3 times more compared to the standard conventional paving bricks made our of cement. 

Furthermore, the machinery, totally made in Rwanda is made as such it melts, mix the plastic and sand, it also has a component of neutralizing the fume/ gaze that is released when melting the plastic, making our whole production process ecofriendly. 

There is lack of proper recycling systems for solid waste in Rwanda especially for plastic, and this is because it is hard and expensive to recycle plastic waste, which increases the negative impact on our environment when not disposed of correctly. 

With our solution, we are making sure we are reintroducing plastic waste in a way that it is harmless to our environment. The activities we do of turning plastic waste into alternative building materials has numerous benefits:

On the short term:

• We are reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in the landfill and causing damages to the planet.
• We are creating jobs and empowering vulnerable communities around the landfill, which gives them financial stability.
• Our clients get, unmatched quality paving bricks that last for an extended period and resistant. 
• We are saving the land that would have been used for disposal to be used for something beneficial to the country such as agriculture

On the long run:

• we are creating green cities that are reducing the carbon footprint by recycling the plastic that would have ended in our rivers and waster streams.
• Our customers are saving money in the long run since they don't make replacement of the paver after a certain period.

Throughout our six-month pilot program, we are looking to serve 40 customers and in one year will increase our reach and serve 150 plus customers. In five years, we seek to serve. 

In five year we look to be serving a market of more than 3000 thousands customers in Rwanda and Burundi.

Within the next year, our goal is to have run a successful pilot project in Kigali only, for the six months (July-December) with proven customer traction of at least 100 customers. At the beginning of 2020, we will then increase our customers targeting 25,000 USD in revenue for the year.

In 5 years to come, we will be having the capacity of recycling 100% of the plastic that is used and dumped in Rwanda. We will also have diversified our offerings from Paving bricks to roofing tiles, blocks, and Timber. 

We will have expanded to all 6 secondary cities in Rwanda and Burundi.

We have two barriers currently that are a challenge towards the accomplishment of our goals, Technical expertise, and Financing.

Our project and innovation require technical expertise not only in the environmental sector but also in the infrastructure sector.

Consequently, our work is also capital intensive and requires many funds to have smooth operations. There is a need for machinery to automate our production process and increase efficiency in production.

For the technical expertise challenge, we are currently working on a partnership with Waste Aid, an NGO based in the UK that is supporting the development of building materials out of plastic waste in West Africa. They do this by providing technical training to local communities on how to conduct the whole process. We hope that through the partnership, we will be able also to get technical support and train our production team. 

On our team, we are also supported by an experienced environmental engineer based in the US who provides us with expertise in the environmental sector.

In term of financing, we are looking to raise rounds of grant funding and investment that will help us to build our small recycling plant. With the sales of our various products, we hope that we will be self-sustainable onwards.

We have 2 full time staff, 3 part time staff and 3 advisors/mentors

Our venture was born out of a class project at Kepler, Co-founded by David Kinzuzi and Rosette Muhoza both having degrees in a business background.

David has extensive experience in business development, where he has been facilitating workshops of secondary students in rural Rwanda, through the Pivot academy project under Mothering Across Continents. He was also a teaching assistant of Entrepreneurial Leadership course at the African Leadership University, Rwanda Campus. All this experience has unleashed his business acumen and has increased his strategy and fundraising skills but also team building.

Rosette is in charge of operations and government relations at My Green Home. She is currently finalizing her degree in Logistics and Management at Southern New Hampshire University via the Kepler program. In high school, she led a public speaking and debate club, where she discovered the passion for solving problems with creative solutions. In her first year of university at Kepler, she represented my school and earned a trophy as the national female champion for intra-university debate in 2017. Rosette is skilled in people management, finance, and operations.

Adding to that, we have two interns and one volunteer on-ground supporting us in our daily tasks. 

We also have two advisors and one mentor who are highly experienced in Project management, environmental engineering, and urban planning. 

With these skills and experience and the support we are getting, we are sure we are qualified to run our venture successfully.

Rwanda Environmental Management Authority: They support our work in terms of network and capacity building, e.g., training.

UNICEF Rwanda: They help a lot in business development and network development where they connect us with potential partners and send us to conferences to talk about our innovation. 

Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) Rwanda: They have supported us financially, and they also provide technical expertise with a focus on Green Cities development, when needed.

Segal Family Foundation through the Social Impact Incubator (SII) Rwanda: They provide us with advise and capacity building and funding for us to increase our impact.

The Integrated Polytechnic Regional Centre (IPRC) Kigali: They are our machinery partner and have helped build our first machine.

Our initial offering is the paving bricks that our client can use to pave their parking lots, compound, and even sidewalks of the road. 

We target middle-income earners who are prospective house owners, and we also target engineers (This particular niche we mostly consider it as a buyer but not users.) this is because we realized that they influence a lot in terms of the materials the future house owner will use when building their house. 

We make money through sales of the paving bricks.

For the moment we are surviving from money raised through grants and prizes, and a small portion we will get from the sales will help us cover some expenses. However, soon when scaling, we will be able to sustain ourselves from sales.

We are applying to Solve because we believe that we will be able to get the expertise and funding we will need to take our solution to the next steps. 

Since we are still in our first year of operations, the Solve team would be of great support in terms of funding but also helping us build strong a strong foundation for our project, and provide us with the right expertise.

MIT Solve has been a key actor in terms of supporting innovative ideas around the world, and they have built an extensive network, and we hope to get various partners from the network.

UN Habitat: we are noth in the field of urbanization.

WasteAid: They can support us with technical expertise in terms of developping our solution.

We want to apply for this prize so that we can be able to replicate our model through a franchise. We will be able to train communities about our production technique and provide them with small machinery that would be able to melt the plastic waste and mix the sand. The machine can be easily portable, and communities would be able to use to recycle plastic and generate income. This would increase our impact. We will achieve this model through STEM training.