NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Early-stage companies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face several common challenges, including limited access to capital, complicated regulations, poor infrastructure and difficulties related to talent retention. Additionally, companies working in sectors whose workforces and value chains are dependent on women can be hindered by negative societal norms, like perceptions of women’s role in society, physical safety concerns, and lack of access to finance and mobility. This is especially relevant for the waste management sector, which is further burdened by negative connotations associated with being a garbage collector or working for a garbage collection company. 

To highlight solutions to these challenges, the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan (WDI) and the Kenya Climate Innovation Center (KCIC) conducted an investigation of waste management businesses and practices in Kenya. KCIC is a leading accelerator and incubator for early-stage green enterprises in Kenya, and WDI is a non-profit affiliated with the University of Michigan that leverages the power of business to tackle challenges to economic growth in emerging markets. The evaluation — a quasi-experimental study conducted through the Sustainable Waste Innovation for a Future in Transition (SWIFT) program, funded by the IKEA Foundation — is led by WDI’s Performance Measurement and Impact team and involved enterprises across the country’s waste management sector. 

As part of the study, we interviewed three outstanding companies from the SWIFT program’s first cohort — Junky Bins, Mega Gas Alternative Energy and Organic Kenya Limited. These enterprises reveal a vital truth: When women’s empowerment and community engagement are treated as integral elements of business strategies rather than peripheral concerns, a company can not only shift negative norms and foster community trust, it can drive financial gains through increased sales, operational efficiencies and brand loyalty. 

Below, we’ll explore these findings in greater detail and discuss their implications for the waste management sector — not only in Kenya but across emerging economies. 

Three Companies Disrupting Waste Management in Kenya

All three of the companies that participated in the study are taking innovative — even disruptive — approaches to waste management.

Located in Nairobi, Junky Bins aims to mitigate environmental pollution and disease while fostering employment. The company collects organic and inorganic waste from households, hotels and institutions, then sorts and recycles it to create products like organic fertilizer and animal feed. It also partners with various organizations to recycle plastics, e-waste and other materials, including specialized firms that convert non-recyclable waste to fuel. Led by CEO Lucy Ngorongo, Junky Bins employs many women and youth in its operations and community engagement projects, and has elevated several women to leadership positions. 

Also based in Nairobi, Mega Gas Alternative Energy targets environmental and health challenges by recycling 250 tons of plastic waste monthly, while creating economic opportunities for women waste pickers and distributors. The company uses a proprietary thermal cracking technique to convert plastic waste into clean cooking gas, which it sells through women entrepreneurs and community kitchens, directly serving low-income communities. Community kitchens allow customers to pay on-demand ($0.2/hour) to access a fully-equipped kitchen, with the goal of providing an easy, inexpensive way for local residents to cook on clean gas stoves — while also giving them the opportunity to purchase gas canisters for their own household use.

With over a decade of experience in regenerative agriculture, Organic Kenya Limited produces organic fertilizer from organic waste collected from farmers, promoting circular practices and re-investing in local farms. Based in Gathigiriri, Kenya, the company also trains farmers in sustainable agricultural practices to enhance their resilience against climate change’s impacts. A significant proportion of its workforce comprises local youth, and 80% of the agro-dealer stores distributing its products are operated by women. 

Challenging Barriers to Women’s Employment in the Waste Management Sector

Our analysis of these companies reveals four ways that purpose-driven waste management businesses can tackle economic disparities and other challenges that impact women and their surrounding communities in LMICs. 

The first involves the barriers women face in the waste management sector. In Kenya (and many other emerging markets), these barriers can include: societal stigma, low wages, job insecurity and exposure to harmful chemicals from plastics, as well as unsafe workplaces (since women are often relegated to informal waste pickers), and the physically demanding nature of the work, which can result in their exclusion. 

Junky Bins emphasized an additional barrier: the constraints presented by early morning field operation (garbage collection) reporting times, which overlap with the hours when women typically manage their family responsibilities. Many women within this socioeconomic class cannot afford household help to secure these job opportunities. Then there is the stigma of working with “garbage”: As Ngorongo noted, “Sometimes we find that our clients insult our staff [and look at them] as illiterate people, [as] thugs, or people under the influence of a substance.” This stigma can even impact the company’s ability to recruit new support staff: For example, recently, when Junky Bins was seeking to hire an auditor, one candidate did not return after learning that the company works in waste management. 

While Organic Kenya Limited noted that challenges for its women distributors and customers include a lack of resources and decision-making power, as well as male-dominated production roles, Mega Gas highlighted harassment and unfair wages. “Women often compromise on prices [for collected plastics] because they need to feed their families,” said co-founder Frederick Nyoike.

The companies are taking different approaches to address these challenges:

• All three companies treat their employees equally regarding pay, policies and provision of protective gear, ending common unfair women livelihood practices. Junky Bins aims to fill 90% of its material recovery facility positions with women, aligning job opportunities with women’s caregiving roles. (This facility specializes in receiving, separating and preparing recyclables for manufacturing.) 
• Junky Bins, Organic Kenya Limited and Mega Gas are promoting education and advocacy to combat the social stigma surrounding women’s roles in waste management. Junky Bins uses social media and community events to raise awareness about waste management’s importance. Organic Kenya Limited’s training programs reach schools and community groups, aiming to reshape perceptions of waste and encourage the public to see it as an input for the production of bio-fertilizers. The company also engages men to ensure that they know what is being taught to their wives in these training sessions, preventing misunderstandings and potential conflicts. Similarly, Mega Gas actively engages men to shift their mindsets on the critical role women play at work, at home and in society.

Integrating Women and Youth to Increase Sales and Operational Efficiencies

Mega Gas, Organic Kenya Limited and Junky Bins each integrate women and youth inclusivity strategies into their community engagement projects, to improve operational efficiency, build better contextualized solutions, improve waste collection amounts (i.e., tons of waste collected) and recycling rates, and increase revenues and sales.

Mega Gas’ community kitchens provide women with an affordable cooking solution and a platform for safe social interaction, attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. “We noticed that women value spaces where they can connect socially while preparing meals. It has become a mental therapy for them, reminiscent of the traditional spirit of collecting firewood together,” explained Nyoike. Furthermore, the company employs a community-led model for waste collection, in which local women form waste-picking groups, streamlining plastic collection. It further supports these groups by picking up plastics directly from their collection points, ensuring that women don’t incur transportation costs, while also offering fair and competitive prices for the waste they gather.

Similarly, Organic Kenya Limited has a women-centered sales and distribution model: Women distributors market its products to independently organized groups of women farmers, who are a key target market for the company. It has also found that women are more likely to be receptive to a sales pitch from other women. Additionally, the company finds that engaging youth in the organic sector is important, as they drive innovation and are often willing to adopt sustainable farming practices. To that end, it integrates farmers, including youth, into agricultural initiatives, training them in regenerative farming, the use of organic fertilizers, and how to leverage waste (rice husk, cow urine, etc.) as an income generation source. Brand loyalty is further cultivated through demonstration farms, which allow farmers to see first-hand the benefits of organic fertilizers compared to the more familiar synthetic fertilizers: “[In] agriculture, you use your eyes to see how a product is performing,” said Teresiah Waithera, Chief Operations Officer. 

Junky Bins works to understand community needs and challenges before initiating projects that aim to increase its waste collection amounts. It conducts need analysis and involves community members in waste picking efforts to optimize logistics, reduce transportation costs and enhance their sense of ownership. It also ensures that youth leaders are invited to forums on waste management, so they can contribute feedback in these closed door settings that enables the company to partner with them more effectively. Furthermore, Junky Bins trains its clients — such as household women, chefs and caretakers at restaurants, hotels and other commercial properties — to enable operational efficiencies in waste collection (e.g., separating waste at the source, instead of after it has been collected by the company). 

Fostering Community Engagement for Waste Collection and Management

Community engagement offers a third way for waste management businesses to strengthen their connection to customers. Successful waste management is not just about technology and processes — it is about people. Communities are one of three sources of waste, alongside commercial and industrial sources. That’s why community engagement is critical for waste management, and why building trust to engage meaningfully for the long-term is essential. 

Mega Gas aims to build a relationship between its products and the community, thereby increasing brand loyalty. As part of these efforts, it leverages its co-founder’s community roots to build trust and familiarity. For instance, the company established a football academy, providing sports gear to keep youth engaged and away from negative influences. It runs educational programs for children on plastic pollution and waste management, fostering long-term environmental stewardship. It also collaborates with trusted local figures such as chiefs and elders, who act as ambassadors for its initiatives. 

Junky Bins works with the local government administrator and commissioner’s offices, and with community leaders, community-based organizations such as Slums Going Green and Clean (led by a youth leader), and women’s groups to build trust, gain acceptance in the community, and obtain support for targeted women recruitment drives to staff its material recovery facility. Additionally, the company conducts background checks of the community members it seeks to work with, to keep its employees safe. In each of these efforts, Junky Bins engages in two-way dialogue to maintain trust, acknowledging that this trust cannot be built overnight. 

Organic Kenya Limited makes a concerted effort to involve men in its activities, despite its broader focus on women’s empowerment, because men hold leadership positions in the community, in business and in households. It works with community leaders, who are often male, to build trust at the grassroots level, alerting area chiefs before conducting meetings, and involving local administrative leaders in company activities. It also counters misconceptions about organic fertilizers by regularly participating in community events, and ensuring that its involvement with local community members is ongoing.

Measuring Impact and Gathering Feedback from the Community

A fourth way for waste management companies to maximize their social and business impact involves impact measurement. Social impact data can provide crucial information for decision-making, identifying operational improvements and attracting new funders. However, generating this data is a resource-intensive endeavor, given the technical capabilities, budgets and time required to develop a strategy, collect and analyze data, and use it successfully to meet goals. 

While all three companies track community-level and women-level impact, they do so to varying degrees of effectiveness — an assessment based on our 15+ years of experience conducting measurement. These companies each acknowledge the challenges of balancing operational demands with rigorous impact measurement, including hard-to-measure constructs such as shifts in societal norms and decision-making power within households and businesses. 

Junky Bins and Organic Kenya Limited use observational methods to measure women’s attendance at events, while Mega Gas counts women attendance at its community kitchens and uses its monthly M-PESA sales data to track the number of women customers. Mega Gas also actively collects and responds to customer feedback on product satisfaction, and reaches out to women groups when they identify negative changes in the amount of waste collected. 

But while these efforts are laudable, we recognize that these and many other LMIC businesses lack a detailed social impact measurement strategy, due to the challenges mentioned above. In response, WDI has developed training materials on this topic, with a keen focus on community impact measurement through participatory research and low-cost data collection best practices, with the goal that KCIC will share these resources with all companies in its SWIFT program.

The integrative strategies executed by these companies highlight an array of solutions that can enable businesses to implement waste management practices that generate greater financial benefits, boost women’s equality and cultivate meaningful community participation. To learn more about this work and to receive these training materials once they are publicly available, please contact WDI-PerformanceMeasurement@umich.edu.

Yaquta Fatehi is a program manager for the Performance Measurement Initiative at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, and John F. Akwetey is a quantitative/evaluation expert. The William Davidson Institute is NextBillion’s parent organization.

Photo courtesy of Biva2017, via Wikimedia Commons.