A tyre recyling shope[photo/squarespace.com]
Recycling of tyres is now common in Kenya, with innovative entrepreneurs making fancy furniture from the old wheels.
Hillary Kitur and his partners, Stanley Kirui and Meshack Kirwa, have found a unique way of making use of old tyres.They are using tyres to make industrial diesel through their firm, Aqualine Distributors Ltd.
The company was initially contracted by Bamburi Cement in 2007 to deliver rice husk. After a while the contract was expanded to include waste tyres.
“Everyday we used to collect 10 metric tonnes of tyres, meaning every month we had a supply capacity of 300 metric tonnes. Bamburi needed only 50 metric tonnes per day and we piled the rest waiting for another contract,” says Kitur.
Before long they had 1,000 metric tonnes of waste tyres they did not know where to take it. They decided to research on how to recycle them.
After doing a comprehensive research for one year and preparations for another year, in 2014 the trio presented their idea to turn the tyres into oil to The National Environment Trust Fund (Netfund), a state corporation under the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Regional Development Authorities, which facilitates research intended to further the requirements of environmental management, capacity building, environmental awards, environmental publications, scholarships and grants. They were awarded Sh500,000.
Together with their savings, they imported a pyrolysis machine (a machine used to recycle tyres without polluting the environment) from China at a cost of Sh13 million.
Since the raw material was readily available the business picked up well and they were forced to contract people from Machakos county, where the plant is based at Athi River, Mavoko constituency to collect raw material for them.
Currently, they have 15 collection points in Nairobi, Machakos, and Kajiado.
“We get most of our raw material from garage workers and different sizes attract different payments between Sh25 and Sh50 per tyre, but we also accept the products from individuals,” he says.