[ { "start": 0.0, "text": "Thuo Lawrence: Now that the EPRs are coming, we need to be well informed of what we are dealing so that when we sit down on the table, we are able to negotiate and agree on terms that make economic sense.", "end": 12.0 }, { "start": 12.0, "text": "Jingle: My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.", "end": 38.0 }, { "start": 38.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Welcome back to Circularity.fm and our series on Circular Eentrepreneurship in Kenya. This episode takes us to E-Waste Initiative, Kenya or E-WIK. We first hear from Jane Muriithi and her colleagues about  E-WIK's model for E-waste collection, refurbishment and resale as well as their technical training institute.\nThe episode continues with final words by Thuo Lawrence, executive director of E-WIK. He talks about their research activities, mapping Kenya's e-waste value chain. But before we start, I have an offer for you. If you want to get the actionable one-pager about these conversations, please sign up for the Circularity.fm newsletter.\nYou can find it at www.circularity.fm.", "end": 90.0 }, { "start": 90.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: So thanks for having me here. Before we start it would be great to know who you are. So, Jane, maybe you can start personally who are you, what's your role at EWIK?", "end": 99.0 }, { "start": 99.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Hey, I am Jane Muriithi. At EWIK I play the role of a collections personnel. That is the E-waste collection. I go to client sites. Do the collection, do the documentation at the client site. That's what my role includes.", "end": 117.0 }, { "start": 117.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Wonderful. So now what is EWIK? What, what are you doing?", "end": 121.0 }, { "start": 121.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: E-waste Initiative Kenya is an NGO that handles E-waste Management. E-waste Initiative\nKenya was founded in the year 2012 and then registered under the NGO Board in 2016, which is current, the PBO Board. So what e-Waste initiative Kenya does, we do the e-waste management for organizations and also for the individuals. We do skills training for example, Peter is our student here. We also do research related to E-waste mismanagement and also management, and also the repercussions of man mismanaging your electronic waste.\nAnd lastly, we do awareness creation and partnerships. So that's who EWIK is. Okay.", "end": 170.0 }, { "start": 170.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And when we talk about e-waste, can you give some examples? So where does E-waste start and where does it end for you?", "end": 178.0 }, { "start": 178.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Okay. E-waste starts from when you, as the consumer are done with your electronic, it becomes to you, it becomes a waste.\nThat's where EWIK comes in. To another person. Waste may be, whenever you've dismantled, your equipment. You do take the repairable parts, the reusable parts, and also the unusable parts becomes now the waste. Mm-hmm. That is for the repairers. Mm-hmm. So there are two definitions of E-waste.\nOne for the consumer and the other one for the repairer.", "end": 213.0 }, { "start": 213.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And what are the sources? So let's focus first on your e-waste management and, and, uh, treatment. And then second one, the training. So for the e-waste management, where do you get your e-waste from?", "end": 228.0 }, { "start": 228.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Most of the producers of e-waste are the households because we mostly deal with the informal sector.\nSo we do get our electronic waste from the households, from companies. Agencies, for example, embassies. We do also manage the year waste.", "end": 244.0 }, { "start": 244.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And when you mentioned households, so how, how do they, do they bring the E-waste here or do you collect it from them? Do you have collection points? How does that work?", "end": 255.0 }, { "start": 255.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: We have some collection points and we also do go for the waste at the year houses, whichever works for you. Mostly the consumers prefer when we go to the, uh, houses to collect the waste due to logistics.", "end": 269.0 }, { "start": 269.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And talking logistics. Do you cover the whole of Kenya?", "end": 274.0 }, { "start": 274.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Currently we are in Nairobi, MBU, bun Mombasa end. And okay.", "end": 281.0 }, { "start": 281.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Yeah. Uh, and then you do your tour planning a bit, how it fits. So it's not that, uh, if a consumer calls you that tomorrow, you will pick it up you will bundle some tours or, uh, how long does it take to pick it up from the consumer?", "end": 294.0 }, { "start": 294.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Mostly, if you've already done the documentation, it takes 48 hours.\nWhat we've, what we've done in those counties, we have partners, we have some setups whereby if you call us and you're in Mombasa, we have someone in Mombasa who will come to you and collect the waste from your household instead of coming all the way from Mbu to Mombasa and that may create a negative value to the organization, to their company. Most of the dismantling happens there in Mombasa. So we do get the parts.", "end": 328.0 }, { "start": 328.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Talking about dismantling and parts, so what kind of R strategies, um, do you apply at EWIK?", "end": 335.0 }, { "start": 335.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: So once we collect the waste from whichever source, we do have our receiving area, then our testing area. There is usually the pathway recommendation: repair, refurbishment, reusing, recycling . so for the ones that can be repaired, they usually go to the repairing site. For the ones that needs total dismantling, we have a dismantling site whereby the manual dismantling takes place. After dismantling, that's when the components harvesting takes place.", "end": 369.0 }, { "start": 369.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And when you repair something and it is in good condition again, do you sell it? And how do you sell it?", "end": 376.0 }, { "start": 376.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Yes, we do sell. We have a site in gala where the reselling takes place, and we also have our own clients whom we do sell to. But mostly we do sell to the repairers.", "end": 390.0 }, { "start": 390.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And when it's not possible to repair anymore, then you dismantle it. And what happens to specific components?", "end": 399.0 }, { "start": 399.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Okay. Various components are taken through various channels. For example, the plastics, they are used to make the plastic cas and also the plastic poles. We have the matha boats, which are exported because currently in Kenya, we don't have the capacity to extract the precious metals in the matha boats.\nWe have the screens, which are right now referred to as the problematic fractions because they do not create any positive value. Rather they bring just negative values.", "end": 432.0 }, { "start": 432.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And in that case, what do you do with the screens?", "end": 434.0 }, { "start": 434.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: We are looking into purchasing a machine that will be repairing the screens.", "end": 440.0 }, { "start": 440.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And then if we go even further down, we talked about cables and copper. So what do you do with with these kind of components?", "end": 449.0 }, { "start": 449.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: For the cables, we do the stripping, either the manual way, using a technician's knife to strip off the cable, and we are currently doing research on boiling the cables using used oil that is reusing the oil to extract pure cable.\nInstead of doing it, the manual way of cutting using the technician's knife for the shields. Right now there is a market for the outside shields, and also there is a market for copper. But currently in Kenya, copper is a problem. It's associated with safety. Oh, okay. Because of the KPLC polls. Mm-hmm.", "end": 494.0 }, { "start": 494.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: So it kind of means that, if you have copper, you have to make sure that you sell it fast.", "end": 500.0 }, { "start": 500.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Not really fast, but it, it depends with the kind of copper you have, ours is purely from the cables, such as the power cables, the, yeah. Phone charging cables. So that one is safe.", "end": 516.0 }, { "start": 516.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: So basically the problem with that is that you have to make sure and demonstrate that that this is like from the cables where you get like an authorized ledget Yes.\nUh, source. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. \nAnd on the company side, you also mentioned, you're managing e-waste and technical equipment for companies. How does that look like?", "end": 538.0 }, { "start": 538.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Before companies release the waste, they want to be sure that they will get one, a certificate of destruction to ensure that the materials that were collected from the site were they were recycled in an environmentally sound.\nMm-hmm. Also, they want to get a report on how the, the materials were used. Maybe if it's, it's the past, how did you use the parts. And also they want to know that you are eligible and you are registered and you are recognized by the government to do recycling.", "end": 571.0 }, { "start": 571.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And is there like a growing demand for our companies to do it?", "end": 575.0 }, { "start": 575.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Yes. There is a growing demand for companies to do it because one thing. We do data destruction before companies release the, uh, waste to you. They want to be sure that their data is safe with you. So what we do, we do onsite distraction and some companies prefer we do offsite destruction. That is, we come with a.\nMachines. So our site, and we do the data destruction here, but we always prefer doing it on site for trust issues. And that way you are sure that the machine that you give to us has no data. So there is no chance of your data leaking to the outside world.", "end": 616.0 }, { "start": 616.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Let's switch a bit to the training aspect.\nYou mentioned at the beginning that you also, uh, offered certified training. Why did you start that?", "end": 626.0 }, { "start": 626.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Due to the growing rate of e-waste, we decided to, to begin a technical training institute that is E-waste technical Academic, which offers, training on E with management and also ICT repair and maintenance.\nSo whenever a student on boards with us, we want to be sure that the course that you've decided to do is what you are sure about. So what we basically do, we will send you on two weeks field work. You go interact with the technicians outside there, you see the kind of work they do, and then when coming back, you are at least sure that this is what you want to do.\nAnd if you, feel that, no, this is not what I want to do from the two weeks you can now go, we remain with the ones who are sure that they want to do the either ICT repayment maintenance or e-waste cost. That way we reduce the number of dropouts once the training starts.", "end": 683.0 }, { "start": 683.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And how long does it last the training?", "end": 686.0 }, { "start": 686.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: The training lasts for six months and, uh, you have three months internship. Okay.", "end": 691.0 }, { "start": 691.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And who are the people who attend and who are the organizations who pay for the training?", "end": 699.0 }, { "start": 699.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: We try to partner with different organizations to get funding for the students because mostly, this is a slow growing area, so parents will not basically afford the fee to pay for the student, but the student is willing to learn.\nSo what we do, we will partner with organizations, try to get something. Also to talk to the parent. And also with our youth management kitty, we get to also find some of the students who are so much willing, but the parents do not have the money to pay for the tuition fee.", "end": 732.0 }, { "start": 732.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And the training is actually the thing that's also happening here on the ground where we're sitting right now.", "end": 737.0 }, { "start": 737.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Yeah, this is our technical training institute, but we also host our mother organization that is E-waste initiative Kenya.", "end": 745.0 }, { "start": 745.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: We talked about also the, what you mentioned, uh, at the beginning, that you're aware of the social component. So taking care of single mothers or, so, so what, what do you do there and how do you how does it look like?", "end": 759.0 }, { "start": 759.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: We do onboard youth mostly, and what we always encourage is having the young mothers come join us, come train with us. You don't have to basically do E-waste or ICT repay maintenance for you to study with us.\nOnce in a while we do offer free entrepreneurship training to them and we also offer counseling sessions to them. So that's why, that's how we are able to engage the young mothers. By offering entrepreneurship, training, other sorts of short courses that may last up to five days. And also the counseling sessions and mentorship also.", "end": 802.0 }, { "start": 802.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And like for young mothers is often challenge to have childcare. So what happens to the kids during that time?", "end": 808.0 }, { "start": 808.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: We have a kid area there whereby the kids, they, they have a person to play with whenever they. The mother is in a session. They have someone to play with, and also we provide them with toys and snacks.", "end": 824.0 }, { "start": 824.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Okay. So they can already play the eGames tickets.", "end": 829.0 }, { "start": 829.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: They do play. We have a child. We have someone who is able to interact so well with them. Someone who is able to understand the kids so that when the parent is in session, she's not so much disrupted by the kid. And also if we have a.\nYoung mother who's who has a circling baby, we also have a space for them here. We currently uprooted the grass here. That's, this is where they usually sit. You circle your baby, you leave her or him with us, then you go back to class. Okay. Yeah.", "end": 865.0 }, { "start": 865.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Wonderful.", "end": 865.0 }, { "start": 865.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Mm-hmm.", "end": 866.0 }, { "start": 866.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And when we look into the future, so where, where do you, uh, see, uh, erase Initiative Kenya, uh, in the next three years? What are your plans?", "end": 876.0 }, { "start": 876.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: In the next two years, we see EWIK. One of the, if not the largest, is one of the largest recyclers in Kenya and also in East Africa with a big capacity for both training, research, and also e-waste management.\nMm-hmm. Yes. So we are going up the ladder, uh,", "end": 898.0 }, { "start": 898.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And what does it need to get there to reach that ambition?", "end": 901.0 }, { "start": 901.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: First we need the equipment. We don't have the equipment, for example, uh, hard disk shredder.\nWe do it the manual way, which consumes a lot of time and also. We need a hard disk shredder for which can also be used to shred plastics. Instead of taking them to other sites, we can do it here. Also we, we are looking into purchasing or having a partner whom we can purchase the screen repair machine with, for us to, but it's like a co shared workspace to be located ingar.\nBecause Ingar, we have a presence Ingar. We have our sub office there and also Ingar many, most of the technicians usually go there to source a maybe if components. Yeah. So if we can have it situated in Ang, that will be great to reduce the increase in screen waste.", "end": 955.0 }, { "start": 955.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Thanks for sharing your experience, giving us insights, into EWIK and your journey and your practices and all the best for your ambition.", "end": 967.0 }, { "start": 967.0, "text": "Jane Muriithi: Thank you.", "end": 968.0 }, { "start": 968.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Thuo, before we talk about partnerships, can you tell us a bit more about the research activities EWIK is doing?", "end": 975.0 }, { "start": 975.0, "text": "Thuo Lawrence: Okay. Our sector E-waste management has very little or no data. So we formed a department for research and development to understand the pathways and how people treat waste. And this we start by the generators, the uptake value chain. And this includes from collection, transportation segregation, processing reuse models recovery of reusable resources to the point of disposal.\nAnd, we want to have a backward traceability of the ity model to see who is plugged, where, who is doing what, and what gaps are there in terms of capacity building or is it is it that we have, um, type of waste that we are not \nable to handle and what we can do. So it's a holistic kind of research where we research on how items can be best designed in the sense that they're eco-friendly and towards their end of life they can be managed in a proper manner.\nAnd it's going to also to be easy to do the same. And now that the EPRs are coming, we need to be well informed of what we are dealing so that when we sit down on the table. We are able to negotiate and agree on terms that make economic sense. Again, we are looking at volumes, and these volumes will be clustered and categorized in a manner that we have different brands we have brands which are similar.\nThen we have the six categories of waste. And they are affluence also because if the packaging materials came with these electronics, then we need to handle them in such a manner that we do not only take care of the electronics, but also the other materials that came with this type of electronics.\nAnd a good example is a style form, which is uh, a bit uh, hard to handle within the African space.\nYes.", "end": 1094.0 }, { "start": 1094.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: And one more follow up question on that one is, how do you collect this data? So how does it look like in reality?", "end": 1101.0 }, { "start": 1101.0, "text": "Thuo Lawrence: We have a two approach methodology. We do qualitative and also quantitative. Where we engage different stakeholders in focus group discussions and also do one-on-one interviews. And also we, we look at all the stakeholders involved. This could be government civil society, the general public.\nWe also look at, uh, the value chains in a different manner. Those who like if, I don't know whether you did look at our report that we did recently. We had even academic background. There, there, there are many dynamics on how people are socialized how they, they, they, they are well knowledgeable on what they're dealing with and many other features that we may want to have a look at.\nBut most importantly is that it, it's both quantitative and quantitative.", "end": 1156.0 }, { "start": 1156.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Okay. I will add the link to the report in the show notes so that the listeners who are interested can, can have a deep dive off. Deep dive on that one. Two let's zoom out again. So you taught us a bit more about the research activities, the colleagues I mentioned the collection, the repair and so on.\nWhat kind of international partners are you looking for?", "end": 1178.0 }, { "start": 1178.0, "text": "Thuo Lawrence: We would love to have international partners who would be able to give us support on, in several areas and one, and which is most important is a research bit. And the publication of the studies that we have done or conducted two, is capacity building and empowerment because there is a lot of green jobs opportunities within the same space.\nAnd also infrastructure support. Um. Mainly because the type of re resources that you need to put infrastructure are heavy. If we get partners who are able to give us that kind of support, we would really appreciate. And lastly but not least about the privilege of going to a lot of countries to do benchmarks and all that.\nAnd it has really helped me to shape up the industry. And based on that I would also look for partners who would be able to support on exchange programs between North and South. For the industry players, especially for the recyclers to be able to benchmark and see what are the countries are doing despite the fact that at the end of the day, we need localized solutions on how we handle our waste locally.\nYeah.", "end": 1250.0 }, { "start": 1250.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Mm-hmm. Wonderful. And two, what's the best way to reach you?", "end": 1253.0 }, { "start": 1253.0, "text": "Thuo Lawrence: We have our our website. It's ww dot e wk org. My email is m at EWIK but can also share my number is plus 2 5 4 7 2 2 9 6 9 2 1 9.", "end": 1271.0 }, { "start": 1271.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: Wonderful too. So let's hope people reach out to you. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you and to your team and, good luck with scaling up EWIK.", "end": 1284.0 }, { "start": 1284.0, "text": "Patrick Hypscher: I hope you enjoyed this episode of our series on circular entrepreneurship in Kenya. If you want to get the actionable one-pager about this conversation, sign up for the Circularity.fm newsletter. You can find it at www.circularity.fm. Let's drive a profitable circular economy. And please don't forget, the most abundant renewable resource is your imagination.", "end": 1311.0 }, { "start": 1311.0, "text": "Jingle: My name is Patrick Hypscher and this is Circularity.fm, the podcast about understanding, building and managing circular business models.", "end": 1336.058 } ]