Making bricks out of plastic waste

Dar es Salaam. In efforts to save the environment from plastic waste, one micro, small and medium entrepreneur (MSME), Hellena Sailas, 24, has started a firm, Arena Recycling Industry, that makes building materials from plastic waste, including eco-bricks, paving blocks and tiles.

The materials that her company makes are used in the construction of affordable houses, toilets, garden walls and other structures, mostly in rural areas.

The holder of an advanced diploma in Medical Laboratory Technology, Hellena is now the director of the company.

Recycling is one way of protecting the environment, she argues. To that end, the company collects plastic waste in different places, and uses it in the production of eco-bricks.

She explains that the idea came to her when she was working as a volunteer in an organization called Psychosocial Health and Entrepreneurship Development Skills (Phedes).

“I was working in the entrepreneurship department where we made clothing for brides and grooms. We would also go looking for locations suitable for wedding pictures, including beaches,” she recalls.

However, along the beach they would find tonnes of trash, especially plastic bottles and other items, all of which ruined the beach scenery. That prompted her to find a solution to this problem of pollution.

In that regard, she did some research on waste management and learned that the symbol ‘3R’ meant reduce, reuse and recycle as a way of managing waste.

She further learnt that plastic waste can be turned into many useful products like oil, petrol, kerosene and even building materials!

So, she established Arena Recycling Industry (ARI) in October, 2018 to deal in plastic waste management by recycling it into eco-friendly building materials like eco-bricks for constructing pavements, tiles and kerbs.

Challenges

She says her biggest challenge was lack of a suitable location for her factory.

Hellena says she still operates her business from home because she has not found land, enough capital and other inputs to enable her to build a factory away from residential areas.

The other challenge is being able to afford machinery with the ability and capacity to produce bricks in large quantities.

Achievements, future prospects

Hellena says she has developed a scaling plan for the project in the past one year-and-a-half,and ARI is already proving to be a successful model for combating the plastic waste problem in communities.

She is building on this success, after recognizing the strong demand for the solution,products and services. Arena Recycling has developed a three-year strategic growth plan to expand its model and its impact over the next three years by scaling up its operating capacity.

The firm plans to expand its production capacity from 200 bricks to 1,000 bricks per day, which will need the use of 2,000-3,000kg of plastic waste. They plan to reach that target by June 2021. Arena Recycling plans to expand its operations in 2022-2023 by opening 10 plastic waste collection centres in different regions. This should help to create jobs especially for women and youth.

How Arena Recycling operates

“We educate and promote the change of behaviour in waste disposal, by involving community recycler’s into logistic and improve their income by buying collected plastic waste from environment, the collected plastic waste is then sorted according to plastic waste composition (density) melted and mixed with sand to produce bricks covered during courses,” she says.

Hellena says they work directly with plastic waste pickers to create sustainable partnerships. They collect plastic waste in the environment and organize beach cleans up for collecting plastic waste and then the collected plastic waste is sorted according to their density melted and mixed with sand according to formula that create and produce eco-bricks.

“I love the environment and my passion is to see the environment free from plastic waste. I started this business because I am tired of seeing lots of plastic on the beach. I believe there is a better way to improve and protect the environment,” she says.

According to her, currently they have been able to collect more 500 tonnes of plastic waste and have produced 5,000 eco-bricks. 1,000 square meters of pavements blocks. They have partnered with young water solutions organization for serving 5,000 students by constructing 12 pit latrines and 2 water tanks. Explaining, she says they started with two schools in the city: Karume and Kiburugwa Primary Schools. The goal of this project is to construct six pit latrines and one water tank at the two schools.

The aim is to address the shortage of latrines at Kiburugwa Primary School (25 pit latrines for 3,200 students) and Karume Primary School (six pits latrines for 1,200 students).

She says they have created employment for vulnerable people especially women and youth through the business and project activities, they have created 8 direct jobs and 20 in directs jobs, 65 percent of these employees are individual households who are living with less than $2 per day.

The project runs in parallel with a campaign that educates the community on plastic pollution and the mechanism of addressing the problem, she says they work in collaboration with the municipal council by engaging the community to volunteer in organizing environmental camps or environmental champions where the main roles will be to advocate and campaign for plastics waste collections, particularly on the beach. Hellena says they are not yet into mass production but produce at least 200 bricks on a daily basis for a period of seven hours.

Eco-bricks are affordable, durable by two times compared to the common bricks made out of cement. They are anti-fungal and anti-corrosive. “We mix plastic with sand to make them stronger. Plastic is made up with polymers and polymers become highly intact when mixed with sand. The bricks are already tested in the laboratory and the results show that they are more durable compared to normal bricks, water proof product and anti-fungal that means they don’t acquire fungus that make them to sustain for long lasting a time,” she says.

The bricks are sold at Sh800 each for wall bricks, and Sh14,000 per square metre for pavement bricks. One square metre can contain 30-50 pavers, depending on shape and size.

Each eco-brick has a protrusion at one end and a depression at the other end which enable them to fit perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle.

Each brick is designed to have vertical holes - which not only saves the amount of materials used in its production, but allows metal rods to be inserted or cement to be filled in to increase strength during construction. “First we collect, then we sort according to their density and then we crush into small granules by using a machine called a shredder,” Hellena says.

In order to raise awareness in plastic waste also to add value to waste they need to see and discover that every waste they produce has value and can be recycled to produce useful products.

She said despite the fact that her father was not educated, he worked hard to ensure his children attained the best education and supported them in any endeavour.

“I’m sad he passed on before I came up with the idea but I’m sure he would have supported me all the way,” she says wearing a smile.

Meanwhile, Hellena’s sibling, Irene Goodluck, says she was pessimistic at first when her sister came up with the idea of making building bricks by using waste plastics.

“I tried to dissuade her from the idea because I couldn’t make sense of it; but she was persistent,” she says.

According to her, the family did not support nor encourage her when she started the project because they all felt that she would fail.

“However, to the surprise of the family, the project picked up and she got tenders from the government to build toilets using her own bricks!

“We are now proud of her - and hope the sky will be the limit for her dreams,” she says.