Create a Simple Receipt Format for Production Effortlessly

Simple receipt format for Production

afternoon um I know we are standing between you and lunch but uh I was just speaking to drari about uh the fact that it is lunchtime but we need to have an important conversation so it's a conversation that we've all been waiting for we have uh questions even as a moderator I have questions but I will reserve it to the discussions that we will be having shortly so without uh further Ado I would like to invite you to this session on packaging in a circular economy in Kenya epr guidelines Innovation and the future of West management an important conversation that we've all been waiting for and uh just the other day we had the groundbreaking enactment and gazettement of the extended producer responsibility regul that we've all been waiting for and just picking up from the last session where the founding uh leader of uh the national environment Management Authority reflected on the fact that we've had very nice beautiful policies over the years uh and what is the status so as we start let's keep that in mind we had the groundbreaking sustainable West management act in July of 2022 how far far have we come with it and now that we have the extended producer responsibility regulation how ready are we to drive its implementation to its effective conclusion so and because you also have very limited time I would want to go straight to the question and uh my panelists uh before you start making your contribution I would request that you just make a brief introduction of yourself and then you go straight to the question at time is that okay great so our first question obviously goes to Dr aayu mashara from the national environment Management Authority and I hope you'll also double up as the representative from uh the ministry of environment and this is around the epr guidelines and echol Levy just the other day we were requested for a memorandum on the inter uction of an echol Ley I know it collapsed with the finance bill of 2024 but I mean there are assertions that it's been reintroduced so Dr a we are starting on a very high gear how will this new epr regulations impact businesses across various material streams in Kenya and specifically there is the 150 Shillings in the epr regulations how is this going to transform the sector but also impact on businesses so welcome Dr I thank you good afternoon um about myself my name is aayu macharia I work at the national environment Management Authority as a director in charge of enforcement uh I was also asked to represent the ministry fortunately Nea is a Pareto within the ministry and I worked in the ministry for six years when we were developing the sustainable Waste Management Act and the Epi regulations and uh another document which is not mentioned a lot but very important is the sustainable Waste Management policy of 20 21 so those were documents that I spearheaded when I worked at the ministry so um those documents were formulated by the ministry uh because I was there uh about the epr law Kenya is celebrating now uh because 10 days ago the APR regulations were gazetted yesterday I was with the lawyer who uh from the ministry and uh we were worried about the last step the last step is presenting the regulation to the to Parliament and she confirmed that she has already uh the ministry has already given the copy to the crack and so everything is finished uh so Kenya has epr regulations now and has followed all the procedures uh will it affect business yes and no uh the epr regulations gives a lot of uh responsibility to the private sector to the producers to decide what they want to do with their products when when after the the the consumer level the government has not prescribed uh any fee at that level actually the fee that the government is going to receive is 5% of what the private sector has received from The Producers so we will be given number will be given money to do monitoring control audit uh by the producer responsibility organizations as to how much money that is including the formula that was used the private sector have been given uh that leeway to to sit like the way we are in a room and agree that for that product based on the formula which is also given in the law and those are facts that if you have a product you check the volumes you check the cability reusability you check whether it has any toxins you also check about logistics of moving that material around you also consider the obligations the APR obligations because they are things that the producer has to do and based on all that then it will determine how much money uh to pay as epr fee to the producer responsibility organization now remember the key word here is uh how the nature of your product for instance if somebody has packaged using a carton carton or hard plastics hdp all you have metal for example or glass you see already the market in the market today even without epr these things were moving so how much e fee is that person person supposed to pay very little because maybe for monitoring because the market is already is already in operation they already uh in high demand but somebody who has for instance a diaper it was not moving at all so you have to carry the whole the whole baggage of moving that material and that those are the only people those are the only sectors that may may be impacted negatively by the epr law otherwise those who have good materials that are recyclable they they are ring all the way there nothing has happened actually they'll be happy because now they will be order in the in the sector peers have been brought together by law in a room and they can talk about their product so so in conclusion I would say that it's a good law uh it does it is not punitive to the sector is only punitive to those who are giving the government uh a hard time the the in the the sectors that are occupying our dam sites because their products are not useful at all they were designed in the first place as waste those are the only ones who will Who will F the pinch but those with good products nothing will happen thank you thank you very much uh Dr and you make a good point there because the Front Runners in these discussions around epr have mainly been the packaging industry and like you say a lot of those products are already moving in the market but if you look at the five categories in the first schedule especially the last one like diapers that you mentioned they have not really been in the room around this epr regulation so there's really some work that needs to be done around getting all those in that first schedule in the category one 5 to start uh looking at how they're going to comply and um thank you for the response now to Tetra par um when you stood up here uh Shireen you mentioned uh bits and pieces around the enas the leves the taxes and even the policy framework so from your perspective and having engaged within the Kenyan Market um you've seen the transition from way back uh when some levies were uh imposed and movements have has been happening so in your view as a big business in the Kenyan Market what are your thoughts around these levies these taxes are they enabling this transition to a circular economy and how best can they be used as severs to catapult us to a sustainable self environment for All U thank you very much for this important question uh greetings to Dr mashara always a pleasure to see you and greetings to my esteemed panelist um I think this is a very important question not only for Tetra Pac and its customers but uh the entire ecosystem we we really really support um an epr um uh implementation in Kenya uh we do believe that this is the only pathway for collection and recycling ecosystem and um and that everyone has to have a role in it however um enforcing um tax policies um that could be um really curm or um Can can really curb any sustainability um investment from the private sector and putting pressure on the consumer uh and um the producer um could at at a certain point um this able this entire ecosystem so what I'm trying to say is um we need to make sure that we design um policies that are um eco-friendly um and bring the consumer as well as producer into a gradient as well as um you know um um maybe um a a phased approach versus um a mandatory Penal izing um the first mover so you mentioned that there are certain first movers like Tetra Pac who started two or three or four years ago and we are all placed in uh the same level Playfield as a new uh entrance so so definitely in in in other markets the best practice is usually um to to integrate um the initiative of the voluntary sector into uh the epr um collection uh and and recycling Levy um and also ensure that the consumer um has access to these products and we don't really raise the price of this product and become inaccessible to the regular consumer thank you thank you very much uh Shireen now to capsa I know you've convened a lot of stakeholder engagements um around this transition to a circular economy um what would you say are the key challenges and just oppose it to the opportunities now and you can also reflect on the fact that uh we've been pushing and advocating for these regulations we have the sustainable West management act what would you say have been the challenges of implementing this law two years after its implementation is it a success and how are we going to do it differently with the epr regulation what what challenges should we anticipate and probably how best should we do it differently to ensure that it's actually fit for purpose uh thank you so much for that question and uh just to introduce myself as I said I represent Kea uh capsa we are the Apex body representing the private sector that is we do representes micr smes we do represent the multinationals and the pars and we have a huge uh database of over 2 million members uh and over 45 million members through the international Chamber of Commerce the Kyan chapter the reason why I have mentioned those uh numbers is because where I sit uh as the head of circular economy and climate change within KSA uh we have been key in terms of um doing the work of translating and uh creating Awareness on matters to do the epr so there has been what you call teething problems especially around the issues of adoption and the implementation of sustainable practices based on the new epr regulation as the private sector so uh some of the challenges that we have faced pertain to obviously the issues of infrastructure infrastructure here I'm talking about infrastructure pertaining to the whole value chain so as much as we're talking about even disposable bugs and the rest we need to have the whole value chain uh obviously infrastructural wise created in terms of even have segregation at source having these waste tracks being divided in uh we being segregated when they collecting the waste and taking it to the dam site where also it is obviously segregated so now what you are seeing currently is as much as we advocating for segregation maybe using eco-friendly packaging and the rest and even from the source as much as we want to reduce waste in our land fields we find that some of these waste collectors uh the trucks they have not been uh confined so that is one infrastructure in terms of you find all these waste that people are segregating they end up being mixed in this truck so it ends to build up logic so that infrastructure that we are facing the other issue is also compliance cost the cost especially for smmes you find that smmes incur a lot of cost before they set up so when you find that there's an extra cost they need to incur in terms of epr which comes to even the issues of recycling using using eco-friendly bugs and the rest some of them are costly and uh they share away due to this cost the other one is knowledge Gap knowledge Gap has been an issue where people don't have information in terms of being sensitized and what it means in terms of epr how will it also benefit uh you as the producer as the consumer and even as a country in general and remember e through epr if it is properly Managed IT can even form part of the ESG reporting because it is part of your books you can be able to show this how I'm able to manage my waste from the start to the end and then last but not least also is the issue of policies policies sometimes we've been having contradicting ones here and there we've been having others that uh end up playing the same similar role we had a similar issue when you're talking about the Eco Levy sometimes back also we had the epr so you find all these they end up serving the same purpose and uh so it begs to differ why can't we just have one more concrete than having so many and then you end up pain in all of them so those are some of the issues but in terms of solutions just take a minute is uh what I've just mentioned as challenges in terms of uh creating capacity and awareness as we are doing in this forum where we educating people that is one so we are trying to solve this problem the other one is in terms of policies we have key players here and policy makers in the house so that means that we need to have people who are able to make policy issues and changes so we need to have uh at least a multi-stakeholder approach which I'm seeing here where you have key players from all sectors giving their views moving forward and then the other aspect in terms of infrastructure this ones calls for public private partnership and even working with NOS so that we can get more funding to equip our infrastructure either capacity wise because they did have an opportunity to visit Denmark which was uh which is having a very elaborate circular economy system where in fact they are going to almost nine bins of segregation so they're segregating their waste up to nine beans and then when you look at their trucks the trucks are divided nine times inside it and then when you go to the recycling plants is the same so it has made all that process so easy and then the last but not least is incentivizing we need the government to incentivize this industry what I mean by that is you find in Europe where people even recycling they are paid to recycle and take a bottle uh you you put a bottle somewhere it gives you uh maybe a receipt in form of which you can translate and go and do shopping with it uh that is for Consumer but for the producers we need the government also to ctiv them give them a tax holiday sometimes or something those who are tax compliant so those are some of the ways and last but not least holding award ceremonies like this to reward good behavior which is not the norm because you should not be rewarding good behavior we expect you to behave good but now this is good at least we are rewarding good behavior of which uh which this circular economy is actually doing thank you so much thank you uh very much drari now to Joseph from unil I know you are a big mover within the market experience across the globe where there have been epr schemes and probably compliant in those other markets in Kenya you've been um participating in this uh process as well so in very practical terms what has been your experience over the past couple of years under the voluntary scheme under the semi mandatory scheme after the enactment of the law and now that you're looking into a fully fledged mandatory scheme with the numerous products numerous elements of how you need to be compliant do you see this as an opportunity to transform the sustainable Waste Management sector in Kenya and what is your feeling about this epr dispensation and you can also briefly reflect on the Eco thank you so much uh moderator Alex uh my name is Joseph Sunday as uh you've correctly put it I am in charge of corporate Affairs uh sustainability and Communications for un Lia in the region eastn West Africa so briefly um I know it was a long question but uh I'll I'll apply myself to the epr and the experience so far so univa is the only company in Kenya that has closed circularity in packaging in some of our products uh if you look at your sunlight in uh in in the household if you look at your VM powder if you look at your domestos toilet cleaner that package that you hold whenever you buy it it's produced crashed recycled and brought back to us to refill 100% circular no virgin resin in it 100% recycled racing okay now let me quickly jump to how we got there it requires a lot of R&D Investments to get to where you are able to prototype fully recycled packag in that looks exactly the same as a virgin Racin packaging it's a lot of collaboration that is required it's a lot of commitment and and investment so it took huge amount of time and resources working with our South African experts collaborating with the Kenyan experts trial and error back and forth to get to that prototype that will actually sell off the shelves there are a bit of challenges of course which I'll come up to and I'll will call them CCI consumer perspective systemic collaboration because you can't do it alone and as kepsa correctly puts it government incentive you already ahead of compliance you're trying to ensure that you don't wait for the stick yeah it's carrot and stick government likes using the the sometimes the stick approach but the carrot also works because it's huge investment into circular creating a circular economy so if we would get the incentives to bring others into the pool that will really work for us but as Dr aayu said epr is now here no more Riders people will have to come to the fold and to be able to say how can we jointly tackle this many is called plastic pollution and then in terms of ecoy um I think that if epr works well yeah and we are able to identify how we can pull resources to create discipline and Harmony within the circular economy system then Eco Levy would be a duplicated version of what we trying to achieve through epr that's in my view thank you very much and I know there are lots of questions around this topic and I invite you to also maybe think about those questions and we'll come back to the audience now I want to switch gears a bit I know we have a number of topics we need to discuss around packaging elimination of harmful packaging and so on and so forth but now on packaging designed for circularity and this is to seal Africa you are one of those companies that have moved the nle in terms of Designing products that are 100% recyclable so what what are some of these design Innovations uh that you are leading as a company and you've also observed within the Kenyan Market to get us to have more recyclable plastic biodegradable packaging reusable containers and how is the market responding to this is the market ready and is it an uptake so that we deal systemically with this problem of plastic pollution thank you Alex good afternoon everyone as uh my name is Mutu RI I'm the country CEO for S Africa Kenya s Africa East Africa based packaging company so we work across Ethiopia Kenya and U Tanzania and also into mosambik now just to get you a question there is the first and most important is that Innovation by Design first we need to say that no waste is a waste if if there is a waste for one of the producer it may be a input for another company so there we start the circular first of all and then you keep engaging your brand owners right and then you keeping the consumer in your focus at the end of the day is the final beneficiary of the product so how you then design your packaging to be more recyclable just to say as you mentioned rightly s Africa was the first East African in our entire East African show all of our products are 100% recyclable we produce from Monopoly Mas we don't have a mix of this a b c lot of additives into that so when we developed our business model we made a very conscious decision that all of our packaging will be 100% recyclable then comes from the design part okay you work with your with your customers Joseph is here unil we have been a more than 35 years partner with unil in in Kenya so a two years before we started the Journey of lightweighting the product for them and like I can give example for dairy industry in Kenya we were the first company in 2019 to bring 20% reduction on the plastic waste on the material side so it starts in house Innovation starts in house the design starts in house because at the end of the day when it goes to the Shelf it is the brand that speaks and the consumer is the one who takes the brand and goes all the works what is behind is within the ecosystem that's the circular economy that's what we talk so sustainability may be a word in the last 5 Seven Years Around the Globe talking too much but you know this is there in part of every business house for a long period sustainability anything you do in your organization is definitely a sustainable way how you manage the business then the most important part is that the other part recyclable is not only recyclable right it is about reusable I think to me the government the sustainable Waste Management act like we say I can just give a small example way back in uh after the World War II in Germany if you see they made 100% that all farm products right should be transported one through reusable packaging right no oneway packaging there so I think those are all the important things we need to bring through the sustainability initiatives in in Kenya and then slowly it goes into East African market and everything so how we eliminate single use packaging in any form right it's not only plastic or glass or water or anywhere you pack the product your are it should be a reusable and we need to move that and for that the consumer sensitives so that is the most important as we said how many companies in Africa or for that matter in the globe has got a power to invest so much in R&D so that comes the knowledge pool sharing with every companies who can part and be a create a circular ecosystem in this world I think that's what I would say from a recyclability and a reusability perspective thank you thank you very much uh mudu now to um rra um uh tal I know you you have this Global Experience around around working with um um the plastic packed and one of the key elements is design and we just saw earlier when we were talking about let's be clear challenge so it's not just telling a brand can you make your product more recyclable like change the color and things like that it takes a lot of efforts from the technical the marketing and even the seit to make that decision and it's not easy so what would you say should be the motivation for industry to actually embrace designing for sustainability designing for um circularity and also just reflecting on epr here in Kenya is coming full-blown there would be eom modulation and things like that would this be motivation enough or what would you um say is a business case for Designing better products thank you Alex uh so yeah for those that don't know uh my name is Talia shalev I work for uh the international environmental action NGO rap rap stands for the waste and resources Action Program uh and our focus is on driving circular living across the planet and we do that through key interventions so one of those models is around the voluntary agreement model which has been mentioned and previously named as a public private partnership uh and the Kenya Plastics pact is a really good example of the voluntary agreement model work working well in Kenya um across Africa you can also see Volant agreements being delivered around the reduction of food loss and waste uh in South Africa and rap plays a strategic role in supporting the organizations like SI who are driving uh those voluntary agreements and in the UK we run our own voluntary agreements we have the Plastics packed we have the courth commitment which is around food system transformation and we also have one around the circularity of textiles and clothing um the motivation around why businesses should do anything is very different depending on the context or the market that you're looking at epr is proving to be a really good reason why any business should be like designing for recyclability um you talk about Ecom modulation that is a key driver especially in the UK um for businesses to consider designing for recyclability because their fees will be modulated depending on the changes that they make but most businesses don't know what good design might look like when they consider recyclability or reusability and the voluntary agreement allows for that collaboration between competitors and between key stakeholders across the value chain to work together to identify what are those changes that should be made and how can we unblock the challenges together to ensure that that is done without any um competitiveness competitive Advantage uh and also to make make it easier for everyone because at the end of the day we all have a goal that we're working towards especially if you are a member of a voluntary agreement you have targets that you're committing to and it is important that you're all working together to achieve that because otherwise you won't hit your targets um the volunteer agreement also does help with creating design standards um and the organizations that are running uh the volunteer agreements work very hard to bring in all of the key stakeholders to identify what those opportunities might be um and that will be different depending on the product depending on the Target that you're trying to address but when it comes to recyclability and in Kenya the target is to be 100% recyclable so all plastic packaging that is placed on the market to be 100% recyclable or reusable by 2030 there's a lot of work that needs to be done and a lot of investment that needs to go into that and so to save money if you work together and you identify what those opportunities might be that best suit your product portfolio you might be able to support each other in making those changes quicker and at less of a cost um so if we don't go down the Ecom modulated route and there is just a matter of a fee being assigned to your products then I would encourage you to be working together more because you'll get more done quicker thank you very much and uh Anita from gstem um this question that comes to you um and it's around trying to decipher what is good Innovation and what is bad innovation I know we have a lot of discussions around uh doing or changing one product to the other or adding another product which is considered wor into a product and then what comes out of it is actually something that is not recyclable so what do we need to do to avoid Innovations and packaging Alternatives that are not tested well or not genuine or are just like they say greenw washing uh practices and how do we know what is real and what is not yeah thank thank you Alex great question so I'm anitaa I'm the founder and CEO of green stem products limited and we are a very young startup the goal of green stem was really to eliminate plastic from the food system where possible uh by upcycling agricultural byproduct into completely tree free toxic chemical free and plasticfree food packaging that would basically mimic plastic in terms of functionality um be price competitive as well um and be lightweight and durable um in addition to that our products are uh home compostable biodegradable and repulpable so um this is an example for example of a sugar cane Bas uh tray it looks very similar to a plastic tray that could be used for herbs and that sort of thing uh there are no toxic chemicals in here no bleach no plastic lining we invented a biobased solvent that allows for waterproofing and oil and grease resistance they work very well in Cold Storage in the freezer for hot foods um we've done all our migration testing uh and they're also microwave safe so um this is an example where we can completely eliminate plastic from the food system so we don't have to worry about recycling uh which as we know is great but in Kenya and globally only 10% of plastic that is used in food packaging is actually systematically collected sorted and recycled and the majority of it is downcycled and it can only be down cycled four to five times before it eventually ends up in landfill or the ocean right so green stem's goal was to create something that um didn't have to be recycled it could end up in your home compost and contribute to plant growth it could end up in a landfill and biodegrade and have no negative impact on the environment or if these planets are brought back to our Factory they can be rep pulped and turned back into packaging um so there and you know if they are handwash they can be reused several times in the household um so that was the goal in terms of the manufacturing process um we tried to be very circular in that um you know when the sugar cane bagass arrives and we cook it we extract the cellulose to make the packaging but the ligant is an excellent biofuel so we uh created a boiler that can combust the ligant to generate heat energy for other production processes combined with solar and so we only have to use KPLC to run Motors and on the night shift uh because we don't use bleach we don't use toxic chemicals like poly floro alkaline we don't use paraffin wax uh all the water can be recycled so all the water that is used in the pulping system can be recycled and all the edge trims can be rep pulped so the idea was to Maxim maximize value from agricultural byproduct that enters the factory um maximize value to generate packaging that is produced in a way that is clean green and circular and then can end up back in nature and contribute to new plant growth uh so that's the basic concept yeah and uh yeah and I think green stem is an example where we have tried to be very authentic and to um you know through rigorous testing and certification um be very transparent and um really you know speak to the principles of traceability and uh avoid the greenwashing thank you very much maybe just put you on the sport how scalable is this solution because it looks very attractive and ening I know everybody's not to E Yeah so um when I started I um I emptied my bank account because nobody was going to give me money to prove a concept this is the first of its kind in Africa right so um I bought a very tiny machine from India and I was using Palm leaves and bamboo leaves and banana leaves and making plates bowls and spoons and to my enormous surprise Green Spoon started buying them so then I started working with the Horticulture companies to develop this sort of thing and we co-developed this product um we then took it to the next phase and we bought a pilot quote unquote pilot or laboratory plant and we started producing I don't know 50,000 pieces of packaging a month uh which is obviously a very small amount and we're selling it to about 15 or 20 very small clients and now we are imple we are we finished installing and we're about to commission hopefully before Christmas uh a plant that can process 10 tons of waste a day and has the capacity to produce 3 million pieces of Ecco packaging a month so hopefully by January we will be able to produce 3 million um thank you and uh and that will be yeah that will be our first step I think the sky is the limit great and congratulations I hope anybody who would want such a product uh you're welcome to engage with Anita and hopefully it will become mainstream now we are getting the F second round of questions but let's try keep it short and sweet so that we can also hear from the crowd and I'll come to you Dr iub in a very short and quick answer next week I know you're traveling to Busan for the final the fifth and final negotiations for the Plastics treaty there is a big debate around which packaging material should be prioritized for elimination listing is one of the issues in Kenya there is already a prioritized list of about 13 under the Kenya Plastics packet in your opinion and as an experienced environmentalist over the years are you considering considering supporting the listing of products that we can clearly see is problematic and needs to be eliminated from the market in a very short and brief um response thank you um that's a good question uh last week we met as the Africa group of negotiators and uh we agreed that we are going to list two items that is chemicals of concern that have been listed in other conventions it will form the initial list the other item we agreed on is uh listing uh those single use Plastics which are under the plastic packed uh however we are meeting now at uh in machak that is where I came from that's why I don't have a suit on a Thursday uh we we are discussing the Kenyan position and we are discussing we are again revisiting that list uh I think the Kenyan position is I cannot communicate it now because we are finalizing the meeting tomorrow that is when we will know whether that list we will continue supporting Africa or we have a different position as Kenya so for now we are we use um uh also um polymer uh based um sugar cane based pack uh caps which also is recyclable and um and and has the full um the full re circularity and these are initiative uh Dr a that that um we have done uh as first movers without expecting any incentivization but for the sake of of the future to ensure that these are sustainable and also affordable to the consumer we need to make sure that we incentivize companies like us um we are 26% grams less than than a p bottle in terms of plastic um and and these are all initiations that um require a lot of uh investment um and requires also the right infrastructure that as mentioned um and the these cannot go hand in hand with an epr system that would give an oversight of of the redesign and reuse um initiatives of of the companies and also promote uh more Innovation into that sector so that it doesn't become um you know just a um a a levy um that companies have to implement but rather use it to their advantage to actually promote sustainability okay thank you uh Sil thank you Alex um most of our products if you say 70% of our products are associated with brand owners for us so it was a easy conversation for us with the brand owners to discuss with them from the design from lightweighting Recycling and most of all the finel members here and in the in the the medium here with all the people now plastic is one of the efficient recyclability product because it consumes less power less water and it has infinite Cycles it can keep go on go on go on on the life because we don't want to get into buying this biodegradable Plastics because at the end of the day it ends up with microplastics into the Earth so let us keep it very simple and clear that we have to engage with our value consumer in the form of a brand owners to get this developed I think that's the most important thing that's what we are doing at the moment and the most important of all this circular economy we talk one thing we need to all always keep it in mind is it is not just recycling products or anything or reusing it is you are keeping your economy in a very healthy State you state economy I'm talking about in financial terms right don't keep importing raw materials virgin material so you take that local waste recycle bring it and convert that into any other product right it doesn't need to be perfectly back to the same product like example our IML yogurt cups right it goes to the market when it comes back we produce crates for agricultural sector right using the same 100% we consume that and we produce it so this is a form of economy we are King in so we dep we don't have dependency on foreign currency huge import cost everything on that side and that is where this Eco Levy is going to play a big part from through the sustainable Waste Management act I think that's one of the key takeaways I would take from this yes sustainable Waste Management act which is Waste Management act which is coming into policy now and thank you for reflecting on that better side of U uh EOL so uh to un quickly I know uh the end of life of your products is mainly uh undertaken by up but how can you um as a company um collaborate with uh the recyclers to enable uh this sustainable packaging management that uh uh Mr mudu is actually talking about all right so again three acronyms CCI okay meaning capacity building capability and investment all right so I'll give you an example of what unil has done with Mr Green as an example the secularity that we created with those three products was as a result of joint trials with Mr Green a very strategic um uh plastic recycler in Nairobi but it took as I said a lot of efforts a lot of R&D input and a lot of Investments based on our unil internal targets for plastic reduction by 2025 okay we need to have 100% of our packaging being uh reusable recyclable or compostable capability capability is about the smmes or like-minded players like C Africa who have been great partners for un l understanding the vision for circularity and therefore trying to adjust the systems to be able to address the needs of the businesses and then how do we then fund those who are willing to walk the talk un Lia Anon Yang and FCD which is a British aiding agency have pulled together funds through a program called transform where every year we give some amount of money to startups who are willing to walk the Journey of sustainability this year plastic recyclers are part of the entries that we will support so other than just doing the commercial side we need to put Investments aside to trigger Investments around secularity and track the impact that it is uh delivering thank you very much Joseph now um in the interest of time I beg your pardon Anita and Dr coori let me have this last question uh directed to wrap and then we'll open up to the floor and hopefully we can get a response from both of you and R there's always that discussion around what is the consumer responsibility in all this so what do you reflect on the role of consumers in this whole discussion because it's it's not only an environmental issue but also a behavioral issue to even adopt this sustainable products that are put in the market it's not that they are not there they are there but what would you say is the role of all the stakeholders including NOS the media to drive this consumer advocacy you know quick response um okay I'm going to play Devil's Advocate quickly and just say I don't think it's the responsibility of the consumer in this argument um I think it's the responsibility of everybody else along the value chain to make it easy for the consumer to not even have a choice to make sustainable choices it's a novelty at the moment that we can talk about making sustainable choices as if there aren't enough or as if it's u a premium or a luxury and I think it's everybody else's responsibility to be making that the norm and making it too expensive unaffordable and almost um embarrassing not to just pick the choices that are good for the environment and it's everybody here and unfortunately we don't have the recyclers represented but also I think that we have we'd be remissed not to talk about the role that epr can play in supporting the informal sector who in Africa play a huge role in ensuring that our waste is collected is segregated and that there is a value added to that so I think there is a role for us to play as individuals as stakeholders okay we are all consumers in this room but not from that angle but to think about how can epr help to manage the finances and make sure that those people are being paid fairly for the work that they're doing to ensure that our environment is not left a mess and that we are making sure that there is recycled content available to feed back into packaging that that is sorted well that there is money for the infrastructure that is needed and make those choices easier for everybody in short thank you that was very nice TST to it now we want to open up the floor to the audience I know we can't miss one or two three questions from the floor so Kelvin I'll pick on you because you're young and you can uh jump on to the mic very quickly so I have a question from the middle section and the gentleman in a blue blue suit and then right back out there so we can start here because it's nearer and then here here please so keep it uh very short and precise sure my name is Teddy I represent the community the consumer I'm the chairman for n estate now good good good good good uh good conversation on packaging one question to drari um you've got uh I've been to the plant uh the gentleman from unil Mr Green they've got the pallets I saw the raisin so the raising pallets is that a raw material or is it a finished product in relation to packaging I'm sure that's a big deal because uh it's a conversation that is going on out there um sha your product is amazing as a consumer I'll definitely go for it and I'll challenge most of the manufactur as univa is she sitting next to you you need to think about that yeah I've seen now this question comes to univa how many cycles are these products of yours I've seen I've seen your the vim and all that how many cycles will they go before they rendered totally unrecyclable or they can no longer be you know cuz at at the end of the day this recycling process has a Twist to it at some point it falls off uh finally sale Africa that is a very good twist to this why do we think recycling because you think you're now saving and you're saving the planet but there's there's energy involved and this Logistics why about we do reusing and I really love the word reuse so in the in the 5 hours I'll go with the rethink redesign reuse before you get the recycle and everyone is jumping to recycle because we don't want to think harder on the other on the other aspects this brings me to Consumers here in your standard takeaway lunch from the fast food uh joints that we frequent the amount of packaging is more than the food we all know that uh I've been challenging some of the multinationals I w't mention their names here but it's quite annoying that we used to have a very robust reusable packaging including the beverages that we consume this glass it goes back returnable bottle it is refilled someone decided plastic is better and now we are thinking about how how do we segregate how do we recycle how do we do this and this and this why can't we just fall back in the in the beginning of this this session I think someone mentioned do you want to go back 40 years back or do you want to go future I think we have to reflect from the future from the past as well thank you so much thank you very much uh Tedy for that list of question now we have isor and who else who will take the last word um if you promise to keep it short otherwise I'll cut s uh hello everyone I'm gouti so my question first of all goes to Mr a I could really like to ask um about the epr how will you make sure that uh the West speakers at uh at the center of this decision making and also the West speakers are engaged to get the incentives rightly rather than for us to have few PR engaging one CBO or two cbos and then we call it all of it to be an epr package and also to the unil LI guy I could really like uh to ask that we have a lot of such CH the packagings which are problematic and single use plastic we cannot collect them as West Piers because they don't have a buyback system how will you ensure that they have a buyback system which is workable and also when you TR down to the ground you'll find the West speakers working on it so I could really like you guys to address How the West speakers will get get the incentives rightly thank you the Secretary General for the Kenya National Speakers Welfare Association thank you thank you very much now we have three questions uh uh DG Emeritus just one question in less than 30 seconds then we go to Lara and finally up there then we go back to okay uh thank you very much my name is Michael Co and uh I just want to talk about epr and uh the act on Waste Management and what I want to refer particularly as the Nairobi River or Nairobi Rivers many efforts have been done in the past um sorry sir yeah just go straight to the question okay H how can how can the epr assist in cleaning up the Nairobi Rivers secondly is that uh the model of uni liver how can that be applied so that it is spread throughout the industries and throughout the consumers so that we can benefit from that those effort those are enough for today thank you thank you very much um laa uh yeah I as a as a small business owner I would love to understand how the epr is going to be practically implemented um and how that will affect me and my business and whether there is any organizations that are planning to do information sessions that we could have access to just so that we can ring sort of bring the message home and make it easy for businesses like myself to be compliant uh with this new regulation finally up there thank you my question goes to Tetra par um I'm doing sugar cane juice and um I'm also doing sugar cane blocks and recently I found uh sugar cane uh paper uh sugar cane cups in Caro I'm wondering whether those sugar cane cups are from your from t park or if you are doing sugar cane cups in Kenya can I link up with you so that because that is my interest to use the sugar cane paper cups so um and then again if the ones at Caro are being used by recycling uh by Bas how come they are too expensive thank you very much now to my Eble panelist I know you have picked a question or two from there I'll start with U far right uh please give a response to any of the questions and your final um comment or reflection Ravi thank you that's a very uh good question uh why we do then we talk about reuse repurpose recycle right that's a very interesting question so like as you also mentioned that how you reflect your past and look into your future right our past was most of the time we have been reusing now we are talking about when we came to a stage that oh we have a blend of reuse and then we need to see how we can get into the recycling so we can't stop looking to the future we have to definitely look into the recycling at the same time bring in the consumer Behavior I think that's the most important if you want to encourage more and more reusability that means when you're moving from linear to Circular economy right linear economy to Circular economy reuse and repurpose will come a major part in the business model so that brings in a lot of consumer sensitization programs I think that's what the brand owners and the responsible converters we play in the market to bring in into the awareness programs of that so we like we depositary system collection management reuse and recycle so when we talk about recycle yes we all started now recycling but do we have enough capacity in this country to recycle everything what we dispose no definitely so that comes a lot of financial investments coming into the business I see there is a lot of encouraging uh discussions around investments in recycling product line not just from the brand owners even from the global funds right so I think these are some good encouraging signs we look positive and we hope for best that's from my side thank you thank you very much Ravi Anita any responses or quick final comments yeah I think the question on Bas cups was directed to Green stem uh so um I yes the ones in carfor are most likely imported um I don't know either from India or China uh we did an award from usaid and we do have uh product molds included in that Grant so hopefully next year we will be able to diversify uh our product range to include um uh cups and uh more food service uh type products thank you Joseph thank you so Tedy I think there are two questions um first being do we consider the pellets raw materials yes they are and that's why West speakers are crucial part of our value chain in fact as we design a business model for secularity they are the core part of how that value filters back to them that is with rigids so I'll come to flexus which was also asked your second question how many cycles probably seven but understand that unver does not go to the dam site or to your household to pick its brands exclusively and then go and Trace how many times it will come back we pick everything as long as it's the same material type with our canisters it doesn't matter whether it's competition our work is to recycle Plastics okay but if you are to trace one canister it would probably do seven times those are question on sashes this is a complex one saet are really really complex because of the weight and how you deliver the incentives that will make sense to the collectors we have already tried P Pilots with some of our strategic Partners where we are converting them to gugs or you know what you call gers all right but we are not there yet and that's why systemic collaboration is important as I said we will not go and pick only our products by the time we make those trials we need everybody to jump into the ship final question was how can we scale how can we share these examples of circularity with others we've done enough consumer awareness and the good thing with consumers they're receptive when we tried the first canister of VI it went offwhite the Virgin one was super white the other one was off-white and we thought they would reject it they didn't okay so consumer awareness but more importantly government support moving Plastics from kisumu to Nairobi each County you pass by you must pay s Duty who will recycle if you're paying Duty for recyclability it's difficult okay so I'm saying circular economy is possible in a nutshell let's all jump on the uh let's all walk the talk thank you thank you very much Talia I don't think any of the questions were directed to me so I'm just going to quickly speak to um the question from Laura about the support that businesses of any sizes should be able to get through once epr is in place in the leadup to it um I think that's one of the benefits of having PR is that part of their operational licenses will require them to run consumer awareness campaigns but also to engage with businesses and to run working groups um which yes in some countries you have to pay membership of but I think that's based on the size of your business so hopefully it's reflective and then accessible for you um and it's those forums that you can use to then ask questions and understand the the infrastructure and what's going to be expected of you down the line so i' I would say that should be something to look out for and if not and if you are able to and it's your questions around Plastics then you should be considering becoming a member of a Plastics PCT um because then you have access to both the secretaria and the members within that and also Kenya Plastics pack is a member of The Wider Plastics pack Network which is a Global Network of plastic packs that are sharing learnings and best practice of similar situations similar challenges and coming together to discuss that and then Implement similar opportunities in their own country thank you Dr Jackson yeah I'll just take one minute uh to the to Prof uh there's a question Prof had asked in terms of epr and how it will help Nairobi River uh restoration and the rest uh cap we are part of the Nairobi River restoration we have been part of that exercise and what we see epr doing in fact when you're talking about epr we like to also R in the issue of CSI the corporate social responsibility and even the consumer one so all this when they work together within that Nexus they help to actually curil the end product which will now be dumped into the waterways so obviously the epr we looking at it as a as a safeguard as we are saying in terms of actually now uh creating that stick in terms of penalizing those people who are actually not being able to look at this product from the value chain from the start to the end where will it fall out so I'm looking at it in terms of it will obviously ensure that there's less waste being dumped into the Nairobi river which is very key and then the other question in terms of e and how what we are doing in terms of of sensitizing Education educating the masses at KSA we work with PR uh such as P Pro the CEO is there you can reach out to her and also Keo is another one so these two PR we work with them hand in hand because they are very key uh when it comes to actually giving out this information on matters plastic or no matters how we can be able to put it more in the loop because remember even when you're talking about plastic we need to look at it in terms of how can you earn from it people are not aware that you can actually earn carbon credits from it because with plastic you need to make you need to actually put your case in terms of is that process you're doing helping to actually reduce avoid carbon or remove the carbon and with plastic recycling the circular economy just a bit in terms of recycling and put it in the loop you actually helping to reduce the amount of energy that could have been used to make that plastic as a virgin product so when you put it in the loop you have actually reduced energy consumption which is also if there's proper recording it can actually show that you have actually helped to avoid carbon so let me stop there because there's a lot I could actually say about this place thank you thank you very much they say once the government speaks then the meeting is over so we'll reserve the last comment for Dr a um sharen any final thoughts and comments or responses in a minute yes so uh just I'd like to uh remind everyone we should not uh leave anybody behind the small and medium uh companies are part of the ecosystem we need to enable them to be part of of of uh this important initiative I remind everyone that um our long-standing partner um uh Pac Pro is here um they can provide the the awareness sessions the knowledge you need and also be part of our initiative that we are doing uh with them uh uh so we are also are are helping into the the responsible waste um disposal at home uh and we keep on on on also bringing uh to the table U the housewives and and and the homes and residential uh my last my last um uh plea is for the government we need to make sure that um we we transition into um a sustainable and epr um that meant that means it needs to be uh transitioned gradually to consumer and customers as well as the entire ecosystem we need to have uh sound targets um we have actually in Kenya only 10% recycling for the LBP which is the liquid board packaging uh and we we we we aim to reach the 100 of course but reaching in 100 um when there is still a lot of work on the infrastructure might be counterproductive so we we we count on Neema of course uh to bring us to save Haven uh with the private sector thank you thank you very much now drari you canish thank you thank you um you know I had I had many questions some clarifications that I had on the floor which I passed through very quickly one of them is there was a mention of voluntary schemes we have tried this since 2018 that is 2018 up to 2022 they didn't work work actually they overloaded some companies others were Joy Riders so that era is gone so in our in our history we can clearly say we we started there but now we the train has already gone uh Tedy asked a question about pellets and I know he's coming from section six section four of the EP law which says who does the law Target and one of the targeted people is everybody importing items in schedule one and one of the items is Plastics what is a plastic is it a glass is it a jar is it a a PT bottle I mean if if you are importing pellets definitely pellet is a we know you are going to use it as a raw material but when it was packaged by when you bought it from the other shop what did that person sell it is a product and so that is subject to the $1 fee fortunately our dollar the way it is prescribed it is per item that means it is one bag one bag of pellets will be subject to 150 Shillings or $1 and so as of now pellets are products and so they are subject to the $1 some some people were worried about the implementation of the the sustainable Waste Management act especially the trucks the trucks carrying waste and uh we were waiting for some directive from the minister about the color code which I've seen in some papers I've not seen The Gazette notice but I've seen like he commented about that especially the carabines I saw green blue and red so if that is true then what my department will do is to go to where the trucks pass and do an enforcement nobody should carry mixed waste at the same time the county governments have to also not mixed even at the dam site okay so that is how we intend to implement that law and then the the awareness will be pushed back to you as a customer so that you don't mix your waste at home uh I wanted to comment about incentives because I heard it now who has more power in asking for incentives they are there in the law we have it in the sustainable management act in mka since 1999 incentives have been mentioned but the requirement is that you negotiate through the ministry of environment through National Treasury and you can see the journey is quite long but the private sector in Kenya has one advantage they meet the the head of state through the private sector lout tables with the head of state who makes who is the final say in budgeting in Kenya it is the head of state so if you could have that c dialogue with the head of state especially on incentives I'm sure they could be considered in uh in the finance act and you will enjoy it if we rely on Neema what will happen is that you know our DG has to talk to the minister through the PS then our Minister talks to Treasury and you know the whenever you make the journey very wrong uh somewhere along the middle uh the uh the whatever the demand becomes not urgent not very urgent then about the West Piers engagement the law says the sustainable the the regulations say that through the a plan one of the documents we expect is financial flow across the value chain that includes the way speakers so you are not forgotten e how will this assist in Nairobi River we are already there we have already engaged 29 companies told them to clean the river another bnch of 85 currently we have 77 that are cleaning randesi rivandi passes through orua Forest coming from gong those 77 companies they have requested us to clear them because they they claim that they have cleaned the river and this week we sent a letter to them telling them that we can only release them on one condition that they hold a workshop where they bring in the the local communities that they have engaged so that we make sure that their plan is sustainable we don't want that River to be diry again we are not for cleanups cleanups are not sustainable aable we are for uh practical takeback schemes okay so those are the ones we are looking for so we want to hear from the community whether that takeback scheme has been established and it is going to work in that region fortunately the epr regulation is in place so any kind of investment now uh is not working futility finally cess cess has been mentioned on the floor here we know this is a challenge fortunately in the sustainable Waste Management act there was a committee that was established called the waste management Council which was supposed to discuss all teething problems within waste management and the private sector is a member the Council of Governors is a member and because that is where the challenge is we thought that when the council is in place you could discuss that issue because we can the national government cannot direct the the county governments so please impress on our ministry our minister to have the council in place so because you are members and then you can discuss at that level I think those are the the questions that I had thank you very much thank you very much uh deari and indeed at the end of the day all that that we desire whether you are in government or you're a brand owner or you're a West Pier or an NGO like myself is a clean safe environment which is guaranteed within our constitution so we hope that this new dispensation where we have epr shall actually guarantee us that thank you very much to my eminent panel I know we are due for launch in a few minutes so we will hand over um uh small package cesy of the organizers and also invite you for the afternoon session and later in the evening for the circular economy Awards to recognize some of the Front Runners in the circular economy space so a round of applause to our panelist as we break this first session of the day thank you very much