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Refill and Reuse Festival: Why Kenya's Recycling Dream Is Failing And How Waste Picker Led Solutions Could Save 46,000 Workers
Gerald Kombo & Henry Naminde
November 15, 2025
Brian Gisore Nyabuti, Chairperson of Kenya National Waste Pickers Welfare Association and Executive Director of Slums Going Green
At Greenpeace Africa's inaugural Refill and Reuse Festival, waste picker representatives, environmental justice advocates, and policy experts exposed the brutal reality: Kenya's recycling system enriches corporations while waste pickers earn as little as KSh 30 to 50 per kilogram despite recovering 80% of all recyclable plastics.
Less than 10% of all plastic ever produced has been recycled. That's not a typo. Despite decades of corporate greenwashing and government recycling campaigns, 91% of plastic waste ends up in landfills, incineators, or polluting our environment.
The solution isn't more recycling. It's refill and reuse systems that already exist in African communities but need policy support to scale.
This isn't theory. It's a proven blueprint.
Exposing the Recycling Myth
Brian Gisore Nyabuti chairperson of Kenya National Waste Pickers Welfare Association and Executive Director of Slums Going Green and Clean, Gisore represents thousands of informal waste workers who form the invisible backbone of Kenya's fragile recycling system.
Speaking at the festival's media briefing moderated by Ferdinand Omondi, Communication and Story Manager for Anglophone Africa at Greenpeace Africa, Gisore delivered a breakdown of why recycling has failed waste pickers and the planet.
"The first plastic which was produced, we are not sure that is ready to be degraded. So how comes that now we are producing a lot of plastic, promoting a perspective of 'we are doing it well' when the people collecting the plastic are earning peanuts?"
The numbers back him up. Kenya generates 983,000 tonnes of plastic waste annually, but only 27% gets collected and a mere 8% is recycled. The remaining 900,000+ tonnes? Landfills, illegal dumpsites, rivers, and oceans.
Two Organizations Fighting for Change
Gisore's dual role positions him uniquely to transform Kenya's waste management system. As Kenya National Waste Pickers Welfare Association Chairperson, he organizes and advocates for 46,000 informal waste workers across Kenya who recover 60 to 80% of all recyclable plastics. These workers earn between KSh 30 to 50 per kilogram, barely enough to cover daily food costs, yet their labor enables Kenya's entire recycling infrastructure.
Through Slums Going Green and Clean, Gisore implements community level solutions that demonstrate refill and reuse systems can work at scale. His organization bridges the gap between policy rhetoric and ground level reality in informal settlements where plastic pollution hits hardest.
Gisore is also a Danida Fellow, bringing international training and networks to grassroots organizing. He has represented Kenya's waste pickers at Global Plastics Treaty negotiations, performed legislative theater at INC 3 in Nairobi, and built solidarity networks with waste picker movements across Africa and Europe.
Most importantly, Gisore understands the economics that policymakers ignore. He broke down the packaging poverty tax:
"We buy milk at a liter at 60 shillings and the same milk we come and buy it in a package 500 grams at 60 or 70 shillings. You are buying the packaging but not buying the product itself."
Communities are forced to buy 5 gram sugar sachets, daily bread in plastic bags, and milk in single use packets because poverty drives purchasing decisions and manufacturers profit from every transaction.
The Recycling Myth Manufacturers Don't Want You To Know
Hellen Kahaso Dena, Project Lead for Greenpeace Africa's Pan African Plastics Project, explained the production paradox that makes recycling a dead end.
"Research shows that only about 9% of the plastic ever produced has been recycled. We want to come up with a sustainable solution that will not only look at waste management but the entire plastic value chain."
Manufacturers prefer virgin plastic because recycled materials suffer from quality degradation with each processing cycle. Recycled plastics exhibit inconsistent composition and inferior mechanical, optical, and thermal properties compared to virgin materials. This phenomenon, called downcycling, means that plastic bottle cannot become another plastic bottle indefinitely. It degrades into lower value products until it becomes unrecyclable.
The Colored Plastic Crisis That Waste Pickers Face Daily
Gisore revealed an industry secret most consumers never hear:
"Colored PET doesn't have a market at all. Things are on and off. You are told HDPE is the only thing which has consistency. Flexes have nothing. Flexes just jump to the landfill."
Research confirms this. Only 31% of green PET, the most recyclable colored variety, gets processed into clean recycled material in the U.S., and the market cannot absorb growing volumes of colored PET containers. Yet manufacturers continue producing billions of colored plastic bottles because aesthetics drive sales, not recyclability.
For waste pickers like those Gisore represents, this means hours of sorting plastic that has zero market value. They risk their health sorting through toxic waste in dumpsites like Nairobi's 40 acre Dandora facility, which processes 2,000 metric tonnes daily, only to discover that most of what they've collected is economically worthless.
The Human Cost: A System Built on Exploitation
Behind Kenya's 8% recycling rate are approximately 46,000 waste pickers who recover 60 to 80% of post consumer plastic waste. These workers, the invisible backbone of plastic recovery, face conditions that Gisore describes:
"The people who are collecting the plastic are earning peanuts. It's not money which someone can survive."
Daily Earnings vs Corporate Profits
Recent studies show waste pickers earn between KSh 30 to 50 per kilogram of recovered plastic, translating to monthly incomes under KSh 5,000 (less than $40) before expenses. They work without health insurance, employment contracts, safety equipment, or social protections.
In Nairobi's Dandora dumpsite, waste pickers hunt through mountains of garbage while exposed to toxic fumes, sharp objects, and hazardous medical waste. When they're injured, they pay for treatment from earnings that barely cover food.
Meanwhile, corporations profit at every step. Manufacturers produce unlimited plastic packaging, charge consumers for the privilege, and face no accountability for collection or disposal. The Extended Producer Responsibility system that was supposed to change this? Gisore says it's controlled by the very industries it should regulate.
The EPR System Controlled by Manufacturers
Kenya's Extended Producer Responsibility regulations became effective in November 2024, designed to make manufacturers financially responsible for collecting and recycling their packaging. On paper, it's progressive policy. On the ground? Zero impact, according to frontline workers.
"The EPR system is not working. We are leaving it to the PROs. The PROs are being nurtured and incubated by the manufacturing association. How do you expect the people who are collecting your garbage to get justice when the system is controlled by those creating the waste?"
Organizations like Kenya National Waste Pickers Welfare Association and Slums Going Green and Clean create accountability mechanisms independent of corporate control. Waste picker led organizations monitor EPR implementation, negotiate fair compensation, and ensure policies actually protect workers instead of manufacturers.
The Refill and Reuse Alternative: Not New, Just Ignored
Dorothy Otieno, Program Officer for Plastics and Waste Management at the Center for Environment Justice and Development, framed refill and reuse within a zero waste framework.
"Zero waste systems mean we want to conserve the environment and resources, which means promoting systems that limit extraction of resources from the environment."
What Refill and Reuse Actually Means
Hellen Kahaso provided clear definitions that cut through corporate jargon:
Refill: Using a container repeatedly with the same product. Example: Buying shampoo, using it, then refilling the same bottle with shampoo.
Reuse: Using a container for its original or different purpose. Example: Buying 5 liter cooking oil, then cleaning the jerry can to refill with water or other liquids.
These systems aren't innovations requiring massive infrastructure investment. They already exist across Kenya.
Existing Refill Systems in Kenya
System | Current Implementation |
|---|---|
Milk ATMs | Operating in supermarkets allowing customers to refill containers |
Water Refilling Stations | Established in communities for potable water access |
Oil ATMs | Dispensers allowing jerry can refills of cooking oil |
Traditional Systems | Sisal bags, cotton packaging, reusable glass bottles |
Dorothy emphasized the employment potential of traditional materials:
"I was doing recently a study on cotton. The cotton value trade is really perishing because nobody is focusing on these materials, and as a result, jobs are being lost. Growing sisal creates employment, cotton creates employment, and it helps us move away from plastic pollution."
Why Policies Focus on Waste Instead of Production
Hellen Kahaso identified the systemic flaw in Kenya's plastic regulations.
"Kenya has made progressive rules: the 2017 single use plastic ban, the Sustainable Waste Management Act, Extended Producer Responsibility. But when we scrutinize these laws, most of them fall into the end game, which is waste management, but do not attack the beginning of the problem, which is production."
The Production Gap
Current policies allow unlimited plastic production while focusing enforcement on waste collection and recycling. This approach guarantees failure because production outpaces collection capacity (only 27% of Kenya's plastic waste gets collected), recycling infrastructure cannot process most plastic types, market demand favors virgin plastic over recycled materials, and single use packaging proliferates unchecked.
Gisore calculated the individual impact:
"You eat bread and milk daily. Just imagine bread and milk in a month, how much plastic have you introduced? Now 50 years that we live buying bread and milk daily. Trim it down to the packaging. Now people are eating snacks, a lot of things. We have a lot of packaging but they have zero value."
The Consultant Economy That Wastes Resources
Waste picker representatives expressed frustration with research that doesn't reflect ground realities.
"We pay people here, consultants. They go do research, something which does not make sense. They do research glorifying the manufacturer. They don't tell you the reality. The reality is hidden behind the curtain."
Clean Up Kenya has warned that some efforts to organize waste pickers serve as greenwashing vehicles to access donor funding while using waste pickers as a trojan horse without addressing systemic issues.
Waste picker led organizations are critical. Resources go directly to community organizing, worker safety, policy advocacy, and refill system implementation, not consultant reports that gather dust while waste pickers continue earning KSh 30 to 50 per kilogram.
Scaling What Already Works
Kenya's Ministry of Environment is developing technical guidelines for reuse systems, potentially transformative policy if waste pickers and environmental justice advocates shape the framework.
Dorothy Otieno confirmed:
"We sit in a community of stakeholders currently discussing the technical guidelines for reuse. This is led by the Ministry of Environment to showcase that Kenya is actually doing something in terms of developing the framework that will guide on how reuse is supposed to be implemented in the country."
What Organizations Can Deliver
Worker Organizing Infrastructure: Kenya National Waste Pickers Welfare Association provides 46,000 waste pickers with collective bargaining power, safety training, and policy advocacy capacity through membership drives, regional coordinators, and leadership development.
Community Refill Systems: Slums Going Green and Clean implements milk ATMs, water refilling stations, and oil dispensers in informal settlements where single use plastic proliferation is highest. Scaling these models requires equipment, permits, and partnerships with manufacturers willing to support refill infrastructure.
Policy Advocacy Grounded in Reality: Unlike consultants producing theoretical reports, waste picker organizations bring lived experience to technical guideline development. They know which regulations work, which fail, and why. Their participation ensures policies actually protect workers and reduce plastic production.
Just Transition Framework: As Kenya moves toward refill and reuse systems, waste pickers need skills training, equipment upgrades, and formal employment pathways. Organizations like Slums Going Green and Clean can deliver this transition.
Regional and International Solidarity: Gisore represents Kenya at Global Plastics Treaty negotiations and connects with waste picker movements across Africa and Europe, coordinating global advocacy while maintaining grassroots focus.
The Numbers That Matter
Kenya's 46,000 waste pickers currently recover 60 to 80% of recyclable plastic while earning KSh 30 to 50 per kilogram. Fair compensation systems that double earnings to KSh 60 to 100 per kilogram would have negligible cost compared to environmental cleanup expenses.
Consider: Nairobi's Dandora dumpsite processes 2,000 metric tonnes of waste daily. If waste pickers recovered even 30% more plastic through better equipment and fair compensation, that's 600 additional tonnes daily diverted from landfills and waterways.
Dorothy emphasized that refill systems create new employment beyond waste picking:
"Growing sisal creates jobs. Cotton production creates jobs. Manufacturing refillable containers creates jobs. Operating milk ATMs and water stations creates jobs."
Job creation at the production level, not just the waste management level. The economic transformation Kenya needs.
Key Takeaways
Support waste picker led organizations like Kenya National Waste Pickers Welfare Association and Slums Going Green and Clean, they deliver ground level impact that consultants can't match.
Demand production caps, not just recycling targets, from policymakers. Kenya's laws must regulate manufacturing, not just waste management.
Advocate for existing refill infrastructure scaling through partnerships with organizations implementing milk ATMs, water refill stations, and reusable container systems.
Champion just transition programs that provide waste pickers with safety equipment, skills training, and formal employment pathways as refill systems scale.
Ensure waste picker representation in technical guideline development. Policies fail when designed without frontline worker input.
Build regional solidarity networks connecting Kenyan waste pickers with African and global movements fighting for environmental justice and fair labor conditions.
About the Festival
The inaugural Greenpeace Africa Refill and Reuse Festival took place November 14 to 15, 2025 at the National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi. The two day event convened policymakers, manufacturers, civil society, and communities to showcase sustainable alternatives to single use plastics and urge the Government of Kenya to set ambitious refill and reuse targets.
"This already exists in our communities. What we need is political will. We need investment. We need the government to work on mainstreaming refill and reuse."
The solution exists. The leaders are ready. The question is whether policies will center justice or continue subsidizing the broken recycling myth that enriches corporations while waste pickers earn peanuts.
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