Mellita Machine
Imagine being chased away by your house owner for someone’s mistake(2020), being punished at school mostly morning for uncontrolled mistakes(2017–2019), spending 60 hours in every semester of the year at school in burning used sanitary towels(2013–2019), inhaling massive toxic gases in burning plastics, land and marine pollution activities and yet we had no where to complain.
In Tanzania girls in boarding schools spend more than 2% of their studying hours in making sure pads are destroyed while others at home contribute to land , marine and air pollution while undergoing this process. Being a lady who went through out all these situations I had to take time and think for a way out to solve a huge global environmental challenge, to let girls enjoy their studies as boys do, spend enough to read and increase their performance in class and lastly reduce exploitation and humiliation activities that girls face on the process of disposing used sanitary towels.
It was a dream to ensure we have better and friendly means of disposing used sanitary towels since 2020 but I only did research to see how futher I can go with it. In 2021 through OMDTZ Twitter’s page I got to see application for Innovators on their Open skies Fellowship Program I couldn’t hesitate to go for it. I applied and go through all the process demanded and after a long process I got an email that I was among the fellows whom were supported in terms of instruments and mentorship to develop my first prototype and a journey to making my dream true started here.
There for I designed a machine aim to solving environmental challenges ranging from more than 100,000 Sanitary towels and pampas which are composed of 70% of plastic and after being used, they take more than 600 years to completely decay. All these wastes are clearly found in crowded gatherings such as girl’s dormitories and hostels in schools, hospitals as well as in high density cities after heavy rain.
The means of disposing all these materials has been a high challenge there for technically Mellita Machine was invented as a solution, that is an incinerator designed to burn 5 buckets of waste in just 30 minutes under 700 degree centigrade temperature into 2 gram of ashes as compared to 36 hours for the local incinerator.
Mellita machine is environmental friendly as it realeases less than 60% of gases compared to other means, it is easy to use, cost effective, portable as it can be moved from one point to another.
Thanks to our first prototype funded by Open Map Development Tanzania in their Open Skies Fellowship Program that has actually attracted 6 large hospitals in Mwanza as well as an increasing demand from Schools and Universities. We are looking forward to improving a few technical parties as well as business models.
Not to mention that, our project won the first place during Innovation week-Mwanza in March edition as well as during Fiesta Innovation Challenge Lianzishe from Clouds Media in September 2022. Our vision is to unleash the power of cutting-edge innovation to create friendly and ethical waste disposal to communities.
