Mr Green Africa

Mr. Green Africa is integrating marginalized informal waste collectors into a fair-trade waste recycling system to alleviate poverty on one hand, and provide recyclables to industry to achieve a circular economy.

They have designed a human-centered business model that illustrates shared value. Mr. Green Africa incentivizes marginalized waste pickers & base of the pyramid stakeholders by offering premium prices and added benefits, to provide a continuous supply of valuable recyclables which in turn creates pathways out of poverty for them, while simultaneously creating a positive environmental impact. They then process the recyclable material into valuable raw material and feeds it back into plastic manufacturers’ supply chain to enable them to achieve their circular economy goals, and benefit from raw material cost savings.

As Mr. Green Africa suppliers, waste pickers can make a higher stable income. In addition, by trading with Mr. Green Africa, waste pickers benefit from a variety of supplier loyalty programs and services such as life and entrepreneurial skills, health care assistance, as well as access to micro-loans. Other non-monetary benefits include the provision of protective clothing such as gloves and boots, as well as tools and in some instances, mobile phones.

Mr. Green Africa sees the informal waste pickers as invisible heroes who have languished at the bottom of the waste hierarchy for too long. Establishing a mechanism through which informal waste pickers can trade directly with Mr. Green Africa gives these invisible heroes a rare opportunity to improve their lives. This is their driving purpose and the key ingredient that makes the organization sustainable, and scalable.

The company has about 1,500 waste collectors, has created 60 direct jobs and has recycled more than 1,500 tons of plastic waste so far. 

Keiran Smith is the CEO of Mr. Green Africa, which was started in 2014 and is based in Nairobi, Kenya.