She is turning trash into cash

For Lorna Cherono Rutto, 26, what started as a science congress project in high school has now turned into an award winning environment-friendly business venture - Ecopost. She talks to WANGECI KANYEKI about her desire to stamp out the plastic menace

It was while in high school at Moi Forces Academy Lanet that Lorna developed a love for the environment and for the sciences through active participation in the Science Club.

While in Form Three, Lorna did her first recycling project that got her in the limelight at the National Science Congress. She collected broken plastic basins and heated them to the point of melting. She then poured them into bottle tops and moulded them into decorative earrings in which she pierced a hole and placed a hook

Having tasted sweet victory of winning she ventured again the next year. This time she made an acaracide concoction for killing pests.

"From crashed tobacco leaves and crashed green pepper and water I made an environment-friendly toxin that could kill insects, including grasshoppers, by chocking their air ducts and thus preventing them from breathing," she says.

This project won her first position trophy in the provincials and proceeded to win first position at the national level.

Lorna was also the Captain of the Science Club. But her KCSE results did not impress her.

Says she: "Getting a B-minus was a huge disappointment for me. I just wanted to hide so people do not ask me what I got. Expectations were also high because I had been the best girl in Bureti District in my primary school final exams (KCPE)."

Later on she got admitted into African Nazarene University. As the university did not offer science courses, her next best possible option was a Bachelor of Commerce, Accounting option.

Accounting came easily for her so she accepted her fate and worked hard in school. She became a student leader and worked at improving communication between the council and the student body.

"I learned that to succeed as a leader, one needs to lead by example so that your followers see that you know how to handle the task at hand," she says. She graduated with Honours.

After taking a six-month internship at Standard Chartered Bank, she joined Imagine Africa Capital, where she participated in helping clients open CDS accounts and advising them on which shares to invest in at the stock market.

"I had to extensively study the profile of a company and understand whether the client would benefit from buying its shares," says Lorna.

Writing business plans

She later joined the marketing department of Imperial Bank, where she says she acquired a lot of professionalism and a good social network. After two years, she started getting restless even though she was enjoying herself.

"My job entailed setting up systems and structures rather than dealing with people. Being a social person, I felt like I should be giving back to the society and in closer contact with people. In fact during the job interview, I remember the interviewer suggesting that I should have thought of working for an NGO because I was so concerned about the ‘grassroots’," says Lorna.

While in employment, she would write down her dreams and prepare attendant business plans to support the ideas. One of the ideas she had been toying with for three years was on how to utilise plastic waste and turn it into a useful commodity.

"I prepared a business plan but kept it away," says Lorna.

Later on she saw an advertisement in the newspapers for a business plan competition dubbed BiD-Network 2010. It was sponsored by World Wildlife Fund.

"I applied and amazingly clinched the top prize in the Nature Challenge Category. I was given Sh1.3 million award and was taken to Netherlands to represent the country," enthuses Lorna, adding: "There were three representatives from Kenya. It was at this time when I met my current business partner Charles Kalama, whose biogas project had also won in a business competition called Chorabizna sponsored by Safaricom Foundation."

Having studied biochemical engineering, her partner brought into the business the technical expertise Lorna was lacking, while she majored in the business angle. Last year December, Safaricom Foundation sponsored the Chase Bank Enablis Business lounge Pad Competition where Lorna won first position in the green ecological category.

Using the grants they had won at the competition, she and her business partner purchased an extruder machine and started a production business at an industrial area go-down.

"At that point I realised that I had to resign from my banking job to venture into entrepreneurship. I did not feel scared — I just decided to trust God and step out. I knew the project would work because it would solve a problem and benefit many people. All I had to do was be a good manager of the project.

Thus they started enrolling marginalised women and youth to collect plastic papers and buckets from collection yards and bring them to the go-down for processing. Waste plastic is in abundance in Nairobi and UNEP is calling it one of the worst humanitarian crises. Nairobi alone generates about 2,400 metric tons of waste daily and 20 per cent of this is plastic.

Yet another award

Using an extrusion process the collected plastic is pushed into a mould that transforms it into a fencing post. She explains: "We customise the posts to fit the client’s need — be it a picket fence, fencing poles or roof trusses."

Plastic poles have a better aesthetic, have durability of up to 1,000 years, are termite and rot resistant and versatile to work with. In the future their company, Ecopost, hopes that the plastic poles will be used to fence national parks and forests in place of timber poles.

Last month, in another competition organised by Seed Initiative sponsored by UNEP, our company won the Seed Awards Business Competition for the impact the business has had on solid waste management solution, creating job opportunities and saving trees by offering alternatives to timber in an environmentally friendly way. This award was presented during the 25th session of the UNEP Governing Council Global Ministerial Environment Forum that was held at the United Nations Office in Nairobi.

Lorna now wakes up inspired to go to work, and even though she works long hours, she does not tire as easily because she is living her passion, intergrating environmental protection with business.

"In five years’ time we do not want the plastic nuisance in this country to exist. We hope to have turned trash into cash," says Lorna.