From fence posts to a plastic dhow: Coast groups turn waste into wealth

Fence posts made from discarded plastic that once lay in landfills, rivers and streets. [Maarufu Mohammed, Standard]

They look like wooden posts, but they are not. These fence posts are made from discarded plastic that once lay in landfills, rivers and streets. In Tana River, a local foundation wants to bring the idea home, while Lamu's plastic boat project has been anchored in county laws and gone global.

In Tana River, the plastics are collected, sorted, melted and moulded into posts for farms, homes and outdoor spaces. For farmers in Tana River, where the sun is fierce and termites are ruthless, that means a fence that lasts. Unlike timber, they do not rot, termites do not eat them and they withstand harsh weather.

The plastic posts are made by EcoPost, a firm founded in 2009 by Kenyan entrepreneur Lorna Rutto. EcoPost says it has recycled about 13,000 tonnes of plastic and helped conserve an estimated 4,500 acres of forest.

Ecopost, which is part of the large campaign by the Guracha Foundation, is pushing for the technology to be adopted in the county. Its campaign, Mji Safi, Hola Yetu and Taka ni Mali, runs under the theme “Opening Minds, Changing Lives”, with a simple message: “Tana River must not be left behind.”

Founder Guracha Abdala said the problem is visible in Hola every day. “In Hola, plastic bottles, plastic bags, and plastic containers are everywhere, in River Tana and in our farms. We complain about it. But what if that plastic is money? What if that plastic is a fence post? What if that plastic is a job for a youth?” he said.

He pictured youths in Hola collecting and selling plastic, women’s groups in Bura and Garsen sorting it, and farmers in Galole and Madogo buying posts that last for years. “It is not a dream. It is happening in Kenya already, and it can happen in the Tana River,” he said.

Mr Abdala asked the county government and development partners, including World Bank FLLoCA and the EbA Fund, to help set up a small recycling plant in Hola and train young people. “Let us turn Hola into a model town for a circular economy in Kenya,” he said.

Discarded plastic that is used to make fence posts. [Maarufu Mohammed, Standard]

Some 400 kilometres up the coast in Lamu, on October 7, the Flipflopi Project signed a five-year agreement with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) on what they term as “Monsoon Winds Seascape”, a conservation plan linking the Western Indian Ocean to the Arabian Gulf, with Lamu as its first site.

The deal builds on a partnership that began two years ago, when IFAW named Flipflopi its Innovator of the Year. Co-founder Ali Abdalla Skanda said the funding has since paid for the group’s eight-person recovery team and its running costs. “In February and July, it helped us recover more than 60 tonnes of plastic,” he said.

Flipflopi buys sacks of plastic from fishermen in Kizingitini, and a barge makes two trips a month from Pate Island. The group’s next project is a 24-metre, 120-tonne traditional dhow built entirely from plastic waste, designed to Lloyd’s Register standards and meant to sail on a global expedition against single-use plastic. It follows the nine-metre boat that first proved the idea.

Flipflopi is also prototyping solar-powered plastic boat taxis for the Lamu channel, meant to replace petrol outboard engines. “It was never about just building boats; it was a symbol about giving plastic a second life,” said founder Ben Morison.

The group’s 2025 impact report, Ten Years to Prove a Point, says it recovered 108.1 tonnes of plastic in the past year, bringing its lifetime total to 448 tonnes. It also found that 76 per cent of what it pulls from the mangroves at Siyu is clothing and textile waste rather than plastic.

Flipflopi sits on Lamu County’s Waste Management Committee and on the steering committee of Kenya’s National Plastics Action Partnership. It is also behind the proposed East African Community Single-Use Plastics Bill, drafted with the Africa Legal Network.

Rather than build a bigger factory, it published an open-source toolkit covering collection, sorting, recycling, enterprise building and policy. In its first year, the toolkit reached 2,202 users in 104 countries.

The model is deliberately small and community-owned. A fisherman named Usmail earns Sh16 for every kilogram of plastic he brings in. “We don’t have any work. This is where we find the means to support our children,” he said.

Last year Flipflopi trained 107 young people at its Heritage Training Centre. It earned 15 per cent of its operating costs from selling desks, benches, kiosks and fencing posts and says it avoided 136,390 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions.

“We should move beyond saying waste is wealth. What matters is how responsibly we handle it,” said co-founder Dipesh Pabari.