Kenya opens first e-waste management plant

Archiv – East Africa’s first e-waste management plant has been opened in Embakasi, Kenya, which will handle the region’s electronic recycling needs. The project, undertaken Computers For Schools Kenya (CFSK) will dismantle and separate electronic waste from Kenya and eventually from Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
Kenya | East Africa’s first e-waste management plant has been opened in Embakasi, Kenya, which will handle the region’s electronic recycling needs. The project, undertaken Computers For Schools Kenya (CFSK) will dismantle and separate electronic waste from Kenya and eventually from Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.
The workers will be properly equipped and educated on how to handle and separate metals such as aluminium and copper, which can be recycled locally, while motherboards will be shipped to Asia and Europe for disposal, says CFSK CEO Tom Musili. ’The management plant has a very safe working environment,’ he comments. ‘€˜We have started in a small way, but eventually we will handle the e-waste from the whole East Africa region.’€™
‘€˜For the monitors that are considered toxic,’€™ he adds, ‘€˜CFSK is shipping them to Norway for recycling. The Norwegian government supports recycling of 50,000 tonnes of monitors from CFSK every year.” Musili is scheduled to visit companies in the US to learn how they handle the recycling of motherboards and monitors in order to replicate the processes in the Embakasi plant.
CFSK has been promoting local innovation by recycling CRT (cathode ray tube) computer monitors and converting them to affordable TV sets. The organisation has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the Kenya National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA), to develop sustainable models for the management of electronic waste. NEMA is yet to develop a law governing e-waste management in Kenya.