A Techie making new carrier bags from used baby diapers.

Convincing customers that our product was just as good and hygienic enough was a major challenge.

Hi Brian, what’s your background and what has been your career?

My name is Brian Were Amina. A scholar in Renewable Energy and Environmental physics. Majoring in Solar energy and the Circular economy.

I’m a passionate renewable energy and environment conservation specialist, promoting sustainability, a cleaner and safer environment.

I also double as a youth Sustainable Development Goals advocate and champion economic empowerment amongst the youths, women and people living with disabilities through entrepreneurship and employ-ability skills development training.

What are you working on currently and how did the idea come up?

I founded Begi Bora Solutions Ltd, a social start up enterprise dealing with solid waste management by recycling disposable used baby diapers to produce eco-friendly carrier bags and seedling propagation sleeves.

This idea came up after the ban of plastic bag use by the Kenyan government. I saw that diapers were being used quite a lot and being disposed of poorly in public areas and with this a solution was born.

We (2 friends and I) set out to produce alternative affordable carrier bags while at the same time protecting the environment from used poorly disposed of baby diapers through recycling.

There is a highly likely chance that if you live in Nairobi or in a major city in Kenya, you have come across a baby diaper disposed of in a public place or in a dumpsite that should not really be a dumpsite. We wanted to create a proper way of disposing and recycling this particular type of waste.

How did you build it?

I built up Begi Bora Solutions through a partnership with two friends, one being a lecturer friend, who was also my mentor.

Finances from my savings played an initial role in the prototype development and testing of the product.

As we went on, we took part in entrepreneurial and design thinking training workshops that provided an enabling platform to build out the idea even further.

How did you get your first customers/users?

The first customers were colleagues from the entrepreneurship boot camps and Agreal Africa Ltd. Marketing to the general public doing shopping in local markets who were also starting to get used to using the new disposable carrier bags also helped.

We also used social media and even got referrals from these online channels as a result of the innovative aspect of our product. And of course marketing on the ground and talking to people directly about the product also got us leads.

What are some challenges that you have faced and how did you overcome them?

We got a bit of push back from customers as a result of the bags being made from recycled used baby diapers. It didn’t matter that they were thoroughly cleaned in the recycling process.

To counter this, I introduced infusion of the carrier bags with African Ankara fabric to produce an even better looking product.

I also started advising on what the carrier bags could be used for such as kitchen waste collection, carrying of non-direct consumption food products etc. and showing the customer that our product went through a thorough recycling process.

Financially/user acquisition wise how is the product doing?

We have produced over 19, 500 pieces of eco-friendly carrier bags and seedling sleeves that have been sold to the general public for shopping purposes, to households for waste collection and for seedling propagation to small farmers.

What are some of the mistakes you made & some disadvantages of working on the product?

We strive as much as possible to minimize mistakes but one thing we overlooked earlier on was not developing a proper channel of handling used baby diapers as the main raw material for our product in terms of logistics, how the raw material got to us. That was a hard one but we have fine tuned the processes over time.

Convincing the customers that our product was just as good and hygienic enough as the others not recycled from used baby diapers was also a major challenge, but, we set out to do the hard things and we found ways to navigate this challenge as well.

What are some of your future plans?

We hope to see the development of used diapers recycling plants in all the major towns in Kenya. There is a lot of this waste laying around and making the environment dirty when it can be used as a raw material for a very simple to produce and very functional end product.

We are also looking to form partnerships with certain entities to aid with our marketing and awareness campaigns to boost waste collection that will then help collect more raw material that our business needs. This will also help with creating proper mechanisms that can be used for collection of used diapers.

If you had the chance to do things differently, what would you do?

I would listen to the customer more and build a product form their end user experience/perspective. There is always a lot to learn from the people who you are building for.

Any recommendations in terms of who to follow, YouTube videos to watch, a useful website or books to read?

As a far as business, entrepreneurship and Motivation is concerned I have consumed a lot of Vusi Thembekwayo content.

Where can people go to know more about Begi Bora?

On X (Twitter) and Facebook @BegiBora

In the news: Begi Bora and Standard media.

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