Plastic waste is causing irreversible damage to the planet. At least 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean per year, harming fish, turtles, and coral.
Nzambi Matee, a 29-year-old Kenyan woman entrepreneur and inventor, was tired of standing on the sidelines of seeing plastic everywhere and decided to do something about it. In 2018, she founded the startup Gjenge Makers Ltd that transforms plastic waste into sustainable, affordable building materials. These include paving tiles, manhole covers, and paving blocks that are stronger than concrete.
Matee gets the wasted plastic for free from packaging factories and also buys it from other recyclers. She used her engineering skills to develop the machinery that would allow her to mass-produce them. The process involves company workers taking plastic waste, mixing it with sand, and heating it, with the resulting brick being an impressive five to seven times stronger than concrete.
The plastic’s fibrous nature makes the bricks an exceptionally durable material and lighter compared with regular bricks. This makes transportation and installation more efficient.
To make the bricks, Matee’s team uses the type of plastic waste that cannot be recycled or processed anymore, including:
- Low-density polyethylene, used in cereal or sandwich bags
- High-density polyethylene, used in shampoo and milk bottles
- Polypropylene, used in flip-top lids, ropes, and buckets
However, it does not use PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which is frequently used in plastic bottles and easy to recycle.
Gjenge Makers produce between 1K to 1.5K paving blocks each day in different shapes, sizes, and colors. According to Matee, the company has already recycled 20 tons of plastic waste since its opening.
Last year, Australian scientists at Flinders University in Adelaide discovered a sustainable method of recycling plastic and organic waste materials into bricks for construction.
