Kericho dumpsite is my goldmine

Chepkoech and one of her assistants sort out plastics in her crushing site in Kericho town. [PHOTO: NIKKO TANUI/STANDARD]

I own a waste grinding factory located at Corner C area, three kilometres from Kericho town along the Kericho-Litein road.

The dream to establish this plastic waste management company, which I estimate to be worth Sh4 million, begun in 2014.

This is after Kericho Governor Paul Chepkwony’s administration decided to outsource garbage collection to local companies and I won the bid.

Through my company, Modasons Cleaners, Furnishers and Suppliers, I won a Sh200,000 a month tender to collect garbage from zone ‘B’.

Before I placed my bid for this project, my company was already offering cleaning services after wining a tender to clean the Netherlands Embassy in Nairobi and later Kericho District Hospital. I felt that garbage collection was not too far removed from what I was already doing and felt I could manage it too.

I was excited by the amount of money I was set to make but when I rushed to the scene to do the work, I was shocked by what lay before me.

We found heaps and heaps of garbage which had remained uncollected from the days of the defunct local Kericho municipal council.

I almost gave up and wondered why I had not formed a road construction company as my friends had advised. I nonetheless did the work and dutifully met the conditions of my bid.

Things took an interesting turn when, last year, one of my campus friends, Daniel Hagby — a Danish citizen who owns a garbage recycling company Coxwain holdings — toured Kenya.

Hagby was very surprised when he learned that after garbage collection, our story would end when we dumped the waste at the Kericho town dumping site.

It was Hagby who opened my eyes to the business opportunity available in waste. I was also surprised to learn that the young men I had hired to collect garbage were making money behind my back selling recyclable items they would pick up during their rounds.

I realised I was missing out on an opportunity to make extra money and I decided to start buying recyclable materials, especially hard plastic, from the scavengers at the Kericho dumping site and I bought a plastic crusher machine.

Once word got out that I was purchasing hard plastic, I started to receive numerous pieces and I currently receive at least one tonne of plastics on a daily basis.

I buy a kilogram of these plastics at Sh15 and I then crush them. Afterwards, I transport at least six tonnes of plastic pellets to recyclers in Nairobi who use these to manufacture new plastic materials.

Sale of these plastic pellets earns me at least Sh100,000 a month.

My Denmark partner and I are currently in the process of shipping a plastic recycling machine from Hong Kong which would be crushing at least five tonnes of plastic in a day.

We will also have a machine which will be used to make new plastic items from the recycled materials such as plastic poles, plates, water pipes among other materials.

I believe the future is bright for recycles since the World Health Organisation is in the process of formulating a policy that will require plastic materials manufactures to use virgin and recycled materials on a 50:50 basis.

I also draw satisfaction from my garbage collection business because it is currently serving as a rehabilitation outlet for six street boys, on my payroll, who supply me with the plastics.