Blogs

Chemolex started the project in April by developing and installing two plastic interceptors in Kariobangi and Mathare sites. The plastic interceptors acted as pilot devices which helped the organization to determine the daily flow rate of plastic wastes in both River Ngong and Nairobi. The data on the daily amount of plastic wastes that were […]

There are children playing with sand on my dusty banks, their mother is busy lighting some fire to boil the green maize cobs, in a few hours, the glass-bottle recycling workers nearby will be trotting by to pick the boiled maize. Just on a plank ahead, there is a young boy, barely in his teenage […]

Plastics are strong, durable waterproof, lightweight, easy to mold and recyclable- all key properties for construction materials. Examples of successful industrial recycling include PET, OR Polyethylene terephthalate, which is used to make soft drinks bottles, and polystyrene for making interlocking building blocks Any plastic waste can be shredded and used as filler material for asphalt, […]

Flies are buzzing lazily around the small mound of diapers as Millicent (not her real name) scratches through the heap of dumped waste near the bank of the Mathari River. If you are keen, you will smell the rotting odor emanating from the river. Millicent is not perturbed. She is desperately searching through the heap […]

The collection of data requires the use of Internet of Things (IoT) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things which collects data right from when disposal is done in households to where it ends up. The combination of data mining and IoT can greatly improve accurate collection and management of waste. This could be possible when smart bins, fitted with sensors, […]

Our planet is drowning in plastic pollution, especially single-use plastic. One million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute, while up to 5 trillion single use plastic are used worldwide every year. Half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once and then thrown away. Almost 80% of these plastic end up […]

The first synthetic plastic Bakelite was produced on 1907, marking the beginning of the global plastics industry. However, rapid growth in global plastic production was not realized until the 1950s.  Over the next 65 years, annual production of plastics increased nearly 200-fold to 381 million tons in 2015. For context, this is roughly equivalent to […]