One woman’s mission to save and fence the Aberdares

By Antony Gitonga

It is one of the innovative ways of recycling plastics in Kenya.

On the shores of Lake Naivasha and along the Moi South Lake, an environmentalist-cum-farmer has embarked on a major project to recycle polythene papers.

Ms Sarah Higgins has turned tonnes of waste plastic from the flower farms to good use.

Higgins is a popular figure in conservation circles. She also contributes to the annual Rhino Charge event.

The Charge Trust, whose aim is to fence the Aberdare National Park, had for years pondered on what kind of poles to use to fence the forest.

"The elephants would easily break the timber poles and this meant getting more poles from the forest and in the end destroying the same forest we intended to conserve," she says.

Perturbed by the rising number of broken poles, a friend in the UK donated a machine for making plastic poles ten years ago.

"When the machine came, it was old and it didn’t have any manual so we had to learn how to use it the hard way," says Higgins.

Committed to saving the endangered forest, Higgins and her husband Mike agreed to take in the machine as they had space and could easily access plastic waste.

Waste plastic

A visit to her farm opposite the sprawling Karagita Estate reveals several tonnes of waste plastic heaped in the vast compound and ready for recycling.

The plastics are first reduced to small pieces and later loaded into the agglormolator machine that slices them into small chips. The chips are then put in the main machine, which has a heating section.

"They are heated and soften before the mould is taken and pushed into a hollow pipe while under pressure," she explains.

The pipe, now hot due to its content, is sealed on both ends and put into a bath of cold water until it cools down. After some minutes, the now ready plastic pipe is pushed out from one end.

"What emerges is a 35kg sturdy, strong and rigid pole ready to fence and conserve the Aberdare Forest," says Higgins.

The couple says they were able to obtain a second machine that can produce 16 poles per day. The poles produced are six feet high with a diameter of four inches and mainly come from the polythene used to build green houses.

"The small paper bags from the supermarkets are high density and their poles can be very weak thus we prefer those from green houses," she says.

 

 

Read all about: Aberdares Lake Naivasha Sarah Higgins Rhino Charge

 

 

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