Ecotiles

Our company's mission is to eliminate environmental pollution caused by plastic and glass waste as well as solve the soaring costs of building materials by recycling these waste into aesthetically appealing, durable and affordable building products for housing consumers locally. Our first product is a roofing tile which is manufactured to the highest quality with locally recycled materials to offer an alternative to highly priced imported building products and local traditional options such as clay.

Through our business, we have been able to create meaningful job opportunities to informal waste pickers who are the key suppliers of our input materials. If our solution was scaled up globally, we would divert and recycle significant amounts of waste from the environment to create cleaner urban spaces for millions of urban dwellers.

I grew up in Nairobi in a lower income neighborhood known as “Mathare”.During school holidays we enjoyed playing soccer in small fields all around the estate. Sadly, these playgrounds are now huge waste-dumps covered profoundly by plastic waste and denying this current generation the fun of playing soccer like we did.

Several years later, I have come to find out that this is actually a huge environmental problem globally. Only about 9% of the 6 billion tons of plastic waste generated in the last 5 decades has been recycled. The rest ends up polluting the environment affecting millions of urban dwellers. The most common method of managing this waste is usually to burn it. However, this not only leads to production of dangerous dioxins into the atmosphere, but indeed not all waste can be burnt such as glass. At the same time, developing countries such as Kenya have rapidly expanding economies and an acute demand for housing. Because of this, demand for construction materials has increased exponentially with key industry players resorting to increased importation in order to meet market demand. However, because of this, most construction materials have become costly and not affordable to the vast majority.

Our main clients are individual housing consumers who build their own homes. They currently make up 80% of the construction market in Kenya. We work with them directly through our own staff and through building masons who we have trained about our product. Individual home builders in Kenya mostly rely on recommendations from their building masons on the type of materials to use for their houses. 

Our interaction with our target clients has revealed that they are keen on cost, quality and also the aesthetic appeal of the product. Our solution addresses this in the following ways; first, our tiles cost the same as traditional clay and concrete but because they are lighter and multiple times stronger, clients save up to 40% in construction costs because of zero breakages and no need of purchasing costly heavier trusses for the roof. Secondly, we have made our tile to look just like natural clay but with the additional benefit of not allowing the growth of moulds hence maintaining a longer aesthetic appeal of the roof. Lastly, some clients like that we are making a quality eco-friendly material which contributes significantly to a cleaner urban environment.

We are introducing a new and affordable composite roofing material for housing consumers in Kenya made from recycled plastic and glass waste. These wastes would otherwise have ended up in local disposal sites or urban spaces where they would contribute to rampant pollution of the environment.

We make our products by first shredding plastics procured from informal waste pickers in to flakes and crushing glass waste in to glass sand. Secondly, the shredded plastic is mixed with the glass sand as well as with normal sand at proprietary ratios. We then use a new technology of extrusion that allows heating of both plastic waste with the sand filler material together to produce a resin polymer that is then finally molded in to a hard to break roofing tile. With our technology, we are also able to recycle various plastic waste types at one go to produce one product. This is done by varying temperatures so that each plastic type which has different melting points is heated to become uniformly homogeneous with the sand filler material. Other extrusion processes cannot do this and therefore we have higher capacity of recycling more plastics. The process is also safe for employees as no fumes is emitted due to our ability to control and vary the heating temperature.

We have made our roofing tile with the same technical specifications as those of traditional clay/concrete so that potential clients do not need to change their roof structure to accommodate our tiles. We also train roofing masons on how to install our tiles for clients on our behalf so as to make it more convenient to use our products.

Completing a typical 3 bedroom Kenyan house diverts a total of 2 tons of plastic and glass waste from the environment. If multiplied by hundreds of houses which we expect to be fitting within the next 3 years, then the environmental and social impact of our business at scale is highly significant. This model is definitely more sustainable than burning the waste in disposal sites which is currently the case in Kenya.

Our solution is an innovative way of managing problematic plastic waste that would otherwise end up in the environment to cause pollution. We are using an improved extrusion process to make it possible for us to make hardy, reliable and cost effective building materials using recycled plastics and sand.

Most recycled plastics in Kenya and indeed globally from countries such as the UK and the US, used to get exported to China but this stopped after they put a ban on all foreign plastic importation last year. Many local recycling companies that used to make crushed flakes for onward export to China consequently closed shop and this has had a serious impact on controlling plastic pollution in addition to lost jobs for informal waste pickers in the value chain. The most feasible solution has to be local use of recycled waste material and this is what we are doing.

We use a new technology of extrusion that allows heating of both plastic waste along with a sand filler material altogether in one. Usually it is hard to heat and extrude plastics with coarse additives such as sand using normal extrusion machines but with our technology we have been able to improve that. The result is a hardy polymer that can then be pressed in to a hard to break roofing tile which consequently becomes a longer lasting product for the end consumer.

With our technology, we are also able to recycle various plastic waste types at one go to produce one product. This is done by varying temperatures so that each plastic type which has different melting points is heated to become uniformly homogeneous with the sand filler material. This is usually not possible for common extrusion processes and therefore we have higher capacity of recycling more plastics. The process is also safe for employees as no fumes is emitted due to our ability to control and vary the heating temperature.

In addition, we have made our technology to be very simple and easy to operate. All our machines and processes are manual with little automation which with little training, the operators are able to run them smoothly. In fact all our machine operators did not go beyond high school in their academics.

Our solution addresses the problem backed by the firsthand evidence of running our pilot for two years. To date we have sold a total of 60,000 tiles enough to complete 30 houses.

Each tile weighs 2.5kg and out of this 30% is plastic and 20% is glass. Therefore we have recycled a total of 45 tons of plastics and 30 tons of glass waste so far. The impact alone of plastic recycling is as follows.  A waste picker can collect 30kg of plastic waste per day. If he works for 6 days per week, and we buy each kilo for $ 0.15, then we have created in total 40 meaningful jobs for informal waste pickers each earning about $ 100 monthly. This is currently above the government minimum wage of $90.

All this is just from running a small plant that made about 6,000 tiles monthly, enough to roof 3 houses. We have now improved our production efficiency, validated our customer base who we know buy our tiles because of its strength, affordability, cost efficiency and aesthetic appeal.

At scale, we believe our innovation will significantly solve a serious environmental problem associated with wastes such as plastics and also create meaningful jobs to a highly neglected group of society.

We currently have support of the State Department for Housing which plans to put up approximately 200,000 units annually. A portion of this will be earmarked exclusively to be built using green construction materials such as ours.

Currently we are recycling waste from our home town Nakuru, helping avoid toxic emissions to about 100,000 people that live near the disposal site. We also offer employment to a total of 50 waste pickers and an additional 200 to unskilled roofing masons who put up our tiles. In a year we intend to set up shop in the capital city of Kenya, Nairobi and we expect that at least 500,000 more people will benefit from our work and will have created direct jobs for 300 waste pickers and 400 masons. In five years we expect to be working in major cities of the country and also to have licensed our technology to one other country in East Africa. By then we hope to benefit at least 2,000,000 people through our work, create direct employment to 2,000 people both as waste collectors, factory workers and as roof installers.

Within the next year we plan to have our footprint in the capital city of Kenya, Nairobi. We will be recycling at least 50 tons of plastic and glass waste every month and roofed about 500 households with sustainable building materials.

In five years, we hope to have our footprint in major cities of our country and additionally have on board at least one East African country. We expect to be recycling at least 500 tons of plastic and glass waste from the environment every month sold roofing tiles to over 5,000 households.

Within the next year, our greatest barrier to accomplishing our goals are cultural and market barriers. Cultural wise, customers in developing countries such as Kenya do not place significant weight on greener options when making purchases for goods/services. It is perceived to be meant for a niche clientele that are eco-conscious or savvy yet the benefits of a cleaner environment benefits everyone. Market wise, we do face fierce competition from companies that have existed in the market for long and have bigger budgets for marketing and customer retention.

Within the next five years, our main challenges will be financial, technical and legal. We will need cash to grow yet in Kenya access to finance especially to small growing businesses from traditional financial institutions such as banks is very difficult to access. It is also difficult to grow without technical expertise in place. Lastly, expanding to newer territories comes with legal issues and one which could definitely slow down our expansion to newer markets.

We will leverage on the current push by both government and environmental civil society organizations that promote and recommend greener building materials as alternative to traditional options that exist in the market. Market wise, we are adopting lean marketing strategies like avoiding typical distributor supply chain and selling directly to clients and using free marketing tools such as social media for awareness creation. We are also training our own pool of roofing masons to make them our product ambassadors/agents and they will earn a commission by referring our products to potential clients. Bigger companies are currently not doing this.   
Finance wise, we plan to fund raise mostly from impact investors who align with our mission to help us scale our business. We also hope to attract and retain a good team to help us in expansion. Lastly, in order to reduce the lag time of setting up shop in new territories outside Kenya, we plan to license our technology with interested entrepreneurs in those countries. This will be much quicker than us setting up shop ourselves amidst all the legal issues that we must comply with as foreigners.

Full time staff; 5

Part time; 2

Contractors; 6

Our core team comprises of myself and my Co-Founder Hope Mwanake. We are seasoned waste recycling experts with over 10 years’ experience in community based solid waste management. Both of us have Masters Degrees in Environmental science engineering from UNESCO IHE in the Netherlands and training in social entrepreneurship from Yale University and Technical University of Delft respectively. We also have an in house construction engineer with five years’ experience working with leading roofing companies in Nairobi. One of our board members is a renowned polymer sand expert from South Africa who has worked for many years making building materials using recycled plastics and sand. He has successfully helped startups in countries such as Russia and Uganda become profit making ventures using the polymer sand technology.

Our entire team in general is passionate and has a burning desire of solving the looming waste management problem in Kenya and beyond.

1. State department of housing and the Kenya Building Research Centre – These two government agencies have been tasked to deliver the affordable housing agenda for government and they identified us as a youth led local company that can supply alternative building materials that are cheaper than imports.

2. Kenya Green Building Association – This is a non-governmental organization currently supporting the adoption of greener building materials in Kenya. By working with us, we help them achieve their objectives of increasing the uptake of eco-friendly building materials in Kenya. 

3. National Construction Authority: This is a government agency in charge of construction in Kenya. It is also in charge of scouting and supporting new building technologies including those that are green. They help organize industry workshops where we train industry professionals about our eco products.

4. University of Nairobi, Civil Engineering, Material Science Department. We are working together to further improve the polymer sand technology and disseminating information regarding it's potential as a new material for construction in Kenya.

Currently we make money through the sale of roofing tiles to individual housing consumers in Kenya at a price of $ 1 each. Out of this we make a 30% operating profit. We also offer installation services to those clients that need us to put up the roof for them and for this we charge 30% of the material cost as fees.

We are selling products and services that currently covers our burn rate. We are planning on fundraising for growth of the company.

Currently, we are only selling directly to individual housing consumers but we believe our pathway to scaling our business is through B2B. These include architectural firms, contractors and government. Being affiliated with the MIT brand will definitely help us warm up relationships with these clients and indeed open up an untapped business opportunity for company.

As a small growing company, one of the main challenges we face is developing a team. We need advice on talent acquisition and retention strategies to help us scale our business much faster. Specifically we need a Director of Sales and a CFO within the next one year and we hope to get advice from MIT on how to attract and keep these new hires.

We also need guidance on licensing our technology especially because we want to expand outside our Country. We need to learn the best practices of making this successful.  

As a mission driven company, we need help in monitoring and evaluation and understanding the key important metrics that we should be tracking intentionally as we operate our business.

Lastly we believe that getting selected in to the MIT Solve competition will introduce us into a network of like-minded change makers and this will foster crucial peer to peer learning among the entrepreneurs. We want to share our own experiences as well with other startups on how we successfully fund raised seed capital for our business in an ecosystem that hardly supports startups.

1. We will like to meet with a company such as Ecovative

(https://ecovativedesign.com) based in New York or (https://quarrix.com) based in Minnesota that is producing sustainable and green building materials for the US market to learn from them.

2. In terms of measuring impact and monitoring and evaluation, it would be great to meet someone from an organization such as B Corp to know what impact metrics are crucial for us to monitor when operating as a social enterprise.

3. We will also be interested in getting introductions to organizations that are keen to finance mission driven enterprises in Africa such as United States African Development Foundation (USADF) based in Washington DC.

By investing $50K from the GM Prize money, we will be able to triple our size and impact within the next one year. Currently we operate a small plant therefore we are only selling to individual housing consumers. An investment of $50k will help us add machinery in to our line and therefore enable us bid for large scale government building materials supplies. From next year going forward, the Government plans to put up 200,000 units every year. We would also use the funds in marketing and product awareness as well as train our own pool of roofing masons on how to install our tiles so that they can recommend this to potential clients. A brief summary of this is as follows; 

• $ 30,000: Machinery (2 screw-fed extrusion machines @ $ 15,000 each). The additional extruders will help us double our current production output.
• $ 10,000: Consumer awareness & Marketing for 1 year. Will include; radio and TV adverts, brochures, sponsored ads on social media and participation in 2 key construction materials exhibitions. Will help us increase our sales.
• $ 5,000: Training of 100 roofing masons at a cost of $ 50 per person. We will use them as our channel of distribution as they are key decision makers on the type of roofing materials that housing consumers should use.
• $ 5,000: Staff cost (New hire Sales manager) salary for 3 months