TakaTaka

In Kenya’s largest city and capital, Nairobi, lies the sprawling 12-hectare Dandora dumpsite, where much of the city’s daily household and industrial waste ends up.

Nairobi generates between 2,000 to 2,500 tonnes of waste daily, and the city’s waste management infrastructure struggles to keep up. It is a toxiccycle that results in harmful chemicals leaking into the environment, causing pollution and affecting people’s health.

Growing up in Mombasa, a coastal city in Kenya, German-born Daniel Paffenholz witnessed firsthand the pernicious effects of poor waste disposal methods. In 2011, he founded TakaTaka Solutions (named after the Swahili word for “rubbish”) to improve waste management and sorting in Kenya and, in turn, boost recycling rates.

TakaTaka isn’t the only private firm in Kenya offering waste management services. What sets it apart, however, is its breadth of services.

Most waste collectors in the country operate on a ‘collect-to-dispose’ model. This means the waste they collect primarily ends up at dumpsites, with only high-value items like cardboard and PET bottles cherry-picked for recycling.

To increase recycling rates, Paffenholz needed TakaTaka’s services to be more comprehensive and integrated into the waste management value chain.

For this purpose, TakaTaka emphasises sorting waste more efficiently at source—households and commercial or industrial buildings—so that both organic and recyclable waste can be collected and diverted from landfills.

The former is composted or sold to pig farmers. The latter, which includes plastic waste, is converted into pellets and sold to recyclers. TakaTaka also collects materials like metal, glass, and cardboard, then sells them to recyclers. Another key focus of TakaTaka is low-density polyethylene (LDPE) material, one of Kenya’s largest untapped recycling resources. Flexible plastic packaging, such as food wrappers and milk sachets, is usually made of LDPE.

“Although flexible packaging makes up half of all plastics produced and used in Kenya every month, only 1% are recycled,” says Paffenholz. Most recyclers shun flexibles as they are usually of lower quality than rigid plastics. Many flexibles are also printed with ink, which causes contamination, making them difficult to recycle.

Cost is another concern.

“Because these materials are often contaminated and the cost of recovering them at the dump site is high, it doesn’t make sense economically,” shares Paffenholz.

To tackle this problem, TakaTaka piloted a facility to recycle low-value materials like flexible and contaminated hard plastics. They are washed, processed into pellets, and reintroduced into the local plastic production system as an alternative to virgin plastic feedstock. The company is one of the few enterprises in Kenya that pays fair prices for these less desirable products.

Once the flexibles are processed. TakaTaka sells its pellets to manufacturing firms to generate revenue and keep the operations financially sustainable.

Paffenholz says that TakaTaka’s efforts have paid off. TakaTaka boasts a 90% recovery rate of its collection. Today, the company processes up to 300 tonnes of plastic bales at its main buyback location, the Dijru centre—its seventh centre in Kenya. Overall, TakaTaka processes approximately1,200 tonnes of flexible plastics per month.

Powering recycling through engagement

To boost the volume of feedstock, TakaTaka had to drive up collection rates.

As part of that effort, the company regularly conducts community engagement campaigns to teach residents the importance and value of separating waste and provides them with the resources to do so. For instance, residents are given colour-coded bin liners along with instructions on which types of waste to place in each bag.

TakaTaka also actively reaches out to informal waste workers to improve their circumstances. Most informal waste workers in Kenya are self-employed, have limited formal education, and rely on waste picking as their primary source of income. They lack all the benefits and protection that come with a formal job.

With the Alliance's support, TakaTaka has been improving the social safety nets for these workers by providing regular health checkups, protective equipment, and even establishing two kindergartens near the dumpsites for children to go to school. In addition, TakaTaka subsidises the kindergarten fees and provides stationery.

Overcoming challenges

TakaTaka’s work is difficult because there are no government subsidies and regulations to incentivise recycling or encourage manufacturers to use recycled material.

To scale its impact, TakaTaka had to find the right partners who understood the waste management sector. The Alliance backed TakaTaka’s vision and funded almost half of the construction of a new flexible plastic processing plant through a loan.

“TakaTaka is unique because it is one of the few projects that deals with all types of waste in an integrated manner, from collecting waste to sorting and selling it. The organisation also makes the effort to collect waste from landfills and cleans it, which is very difficult.” says Michael Kambwale, who oversees the project as Senior Project Advisor of EMEA projects at the Alliance.

But the journey has not always been smooth sailing. There are several painpoints that TakaTaka has had to manage.

For instance, getting a reliable source of waste materials from informal waste workers, especially flexibles, can be an issue.

“Some of the waste materials that the suppliers deliver are dirty and wet (which adds to the weight). So even though TakaTaka pays for all the material received, it might only be able to process part of that collection and discard the rest,” says Kambwale, adding that this problem could potentially impact the organisation’s cashflow. To deal with this, TakaTaka uses a compressor to remove the water to obtain the exact weight of the collection and takes out the dirty material before paying the suppliers.

TakaTaka also faced issues in maintaining the processing line equipment.One of its units frequently malfunctioned, impacting the recycling process.

With the loan provided by the Alliance, TakaTaka was able to purchase state-of-the-art equipment, including an extruder, pelletizer, washing line,and wastewater treatment system. As a result, it can now improve qualitycontrol in its recycling process and increase pellet production.