Waste is not going away. If anything, the amount of waste generated as populations grow, consumption increases and cities expand is likely to become an even bigger challenge in the years ahead. Around the world, that reality is pushing governments, businesses and innovators to rethink what happens to materials after they are discarded. For four Stratizens, it also raised a question of what if waste were not treated as the end of a product’s life but as the beginning of another?

That question led Lewis Sange and Preston Ndegwa of the Strathmore Institute of Mathematical Sciences (SIMS), Ian Omwenga and Hope Wanjohi of the School of Computing and Engineering Sciences (SCES), all members of the Strathmore Environmental Sustainability Community (SESC), to develop Cleanvestia, an idea designed to bring greater structure and digital connectivity to Kenya’s largely informal waste economy.

Their ambition is rooted in the principles of the circular economy: keeping materials in use for longer, recovering value from what would otherwise be discarded and reducing the amount of waste that ultimately ends up in landfills. However, Cleanvestia is not simply an idea about recycling. It is an attempt to build infrastructure around an industry that already exists.

Kenya already has an extensive network of people collecting, sorting, transporting and trading recyclable materials. Much of that activity, however, happens informally. Waste collectors may move from door to door looking for recyclable materials, while others transport what they collect over long distances to find buyers. Between collectors and manufacturers are intermediaries, licensed suppliers and other players who help move materials through the chain. The students saw an opportunity in the gaps between these actors.

“We wanted to digitise the waste economy,” says Preston, a Financial Engineering student.

The original idea was straightforward. Create a platform that connects people with recyclable materials to companies that need them. But as the students began researching the industry and speaking to people working within it, they realised that digitising the marketplace would not be enough. They encountered a system in which collectors struggled to access reliable buyers and sometimes received only a fraction of the value generated further along the chain.

In one example shared with the team, a manufacturer could pay KShs. 100 for a kilogram of recyclable material, while a collector who had spent KShs. 50, acquiring it received only KSh70. The remaining value went to an intermediary.

“What is passing through is way more than what they are getting,” Preston says.

The students initially saw the intermediary as part of the problem. Then they discovered why some intermediaries existed in the first place.

Some manufacturers can only buy recyclable materials from licensed waste collectors, while many informal collectors lack the required licences. Intermediaries can therefore provide an important link between informal collectors and formal buyers.

That discovery changed the students’ thinking. The goal was no longer simply to eliminate middlemen, but to create a system in which the different players in the value chain could be connected more transparently and efficiently.

The team also had to learn to narrow its ambitions. Its initial concept covered plastics, glass, metals and electronic waste. Further research showed just how different each part of the waste economy could be. Rather than attempting to digitise everything at once, the students began developing a model that could start with specific materials and expand over time.

Under the proposed Cleanvestia model, waste collectors would list recyclable materials available for sale on the platform. Manufacturers and recycling companies could identify the materials and quantities they require. The material would then move to a collection hub, where its quantity and quality could be verified before the transaction is completed and the seller is paid.

The model, therefore, combines a digital marketplace with physical infrastructure. That physical component is one of the biggest challenges the students now face. Collection and verification hubs would require space, equipment, staff and transport.

To reduce the cost of establishing such facilities, the team is exploring alternatives, including the use of shipping containers as smaller verification centres. It is a long way from the first version of the idea, and that evolution was tested when Cleanvestia entered an international competition.

The Cleanvestia team eventually competed against more than 100 teams in the global innovation process. Cleanvestia emerged among the final six, earning the team an opportunity to travel to Cairo, Egypt, for the final stage of the PRME Students Innovation Studio and pitch at the PRME Global Forum.

For the four students, however, getting to Egypt was only half the achievement. They were the only undergraduate team in the final. Around them were competitors with significantly more academic and professional experience, including students pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees. Other teams arrived with concepts that had already been developed much further.

Cleanvestia was different. The Strathmore students had an idea, research and a prototype. They did not yet have a fully operational company.

That difference became apparent during the judging. The questions were no longer simply about whether waste was a problem or whether a digital marketplace could connect buyers and sellers. The judges wanted to know what the business would cost to build. How much would it take to establish collection and verification hubs? Would materials be verified? How many people would be required to operate the system? What would happen when the model expanded to multiple locations?

The experience became a crash course for the students in what it takes to turn an idea into a business. A compelling social or environmental problem, they discovered, still needs a financial model capable of sustaining the solution.

Cleanvestia is not yet publicly launched. The team plans to begin by testing the platform in a controlled sandbox environment with stakeholders it has already engaged during its research.

Its proposed business model would charge buyers subscription fees rather than charging waste collectors. The intention is to ensure that collectors retain more of the value generated by the materials they collect.

The team of four also sees a larger purpose in the platform. They want to change how people understand the material they throw away. A plastic bottle discarded by a consumer may appear to have little or no value. Further along the chain, that same material can become a raw input for manufacturing.

In a circular economy, waste can become a resource. Cleanvestia is an attempt to build some of the missing connections that would allow that value to move more efficiently.

The students are realistic about where they stand. They have not transformed Kenya’s waste economy. They have an idea, a prototype, research, mentorship and international recognition. What they now need is evidence that the model can work in the real world.

That is the next test.

Their journey to Egypt gave them an opportunity to stand alongside teams with more developed ventures and far more academic experience. They arrived as undergraduates with a prototype and left with a clearer understanding of what it would take to turn that prototype into a functioning business.

As for the team lead, Lewis, he left with a coveted position as Regional Student Leader for Africa for the United Nations Global Compact’s 26th mandate, driving youth-led sustainable projects across Africa.

What begins as four students addressing a waste problem that is unlikely to disappear may be the beginning of something bigger.

Their idea is simple in principle: create greater structure in an informal market, connect the people who collect recyclable materials with the businesses that need them, and help keep those materials in circulation.

The harder task now is proving that the idea can work. And if it does, the four students believe Cleanvestia could begin in Kenya and eventually become part of a much larger African circular economy.

Article written by Maitethia Doreen