Turning water hyacinth into hand sanitiser to help protect people in Kenya
Chemistry teacher, Richard Arwa, had already embarked on the mission to garner the benefits of water hyacinth as a sustainable cooking fuel when the pandemic hit. As the need became apparent, he pivoted his business to repurpose the ethanol from his cooking fuel to produce alcohol-based hand sanitisers, helping to fight COVID-19 and providing a local solution to a vital need.
Returning from a business trip, Richard Arwa was just settling into his new workshop in Kisumu when the Kenyan Government imposed a national lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. Like many businesses, the Centre for Innovation, Science and Technology (CIST) East Africa found that its distribution line was disrupted, limiting the ability to get products to customers. Border closures meant that equipment could no longer be delivered from China, halting construction of the new workshop, national lockdown delayed the transportation of raw materials to the laboratory, and with the government banning all external visits for unessential products to Kakuma Refugee Camp, their main bio-ethanol fuel market, sales began to drop.
Meanwhile, the Kenyan government ordered the mandatory use of alcohol-based hand sanitisers in public places. Driven by the World Health Organisation’s recommendation to use hand sanitisers of a 70% alcohol concentration or above, CIST East Africa capitalised on the opportunity to develop a second product line, purifying 30% of their distilled alcohol to produce food grade alcohol-based hand sanitiser at a 94% concentration. In Arwa’s own words, what started as a “classroom experiment…has now transformed to a company that provides households of low income with affordable clean cooking fuel and alcohol-based hand sanitiser”.
From school to market via the circular economy
In Kenya, wood fuel supplies around 95% of rural household’s energy requirements. High dependency on this resource is not only related to deforestation but carries widespread health implications due to the smoke produced during combustion. In fact, this pollution leads to 4 million deaths annually, more than those resulting from Malaria, HIV, and TB combined. When disaggregated, the data shows that women and girls are disproportionately affected as a result of spending more time cooking. With 3 billion people depending on firewood, charcoal, or kerosene to cook food globally, it was clear to Arwa that “existing strategies are struggling to solve the problem of unsustainable, unhealthy but enduring cooking practices which place a particular burden on women”. Instead, a different strategy was needed to support low-income economies to transition to the use of modern cooking practices.
“Existing strategies are struggling to solve the problem of unsustainable, unhealthy but enduring cooking practices which place a particular burden on women.”
Believing “that using emerging innovations and technologies to produce ethanol fuel… could potentially leapfrog existing harmful practices in cooking with significant development benefits”, Arwa and two students first presented the idea of recycling water hyacinth into ethanol fuel at Mudhiero Secondary School as part of the Science and Engineering Fair in 2016. In doing so, they were able to evidence that repurposing an invasive “waste” material that was causing environmental hazard could provide an economical solution to ethanol production.
Water hyacinth was introduced into Africa under colonialism in the 1900s. Known for its invasive nature, it soon became a socioeconomic issue as it migrated from private ponds to major rivers. Today it not only clogs major waterways but limits the ability of local fishers to bring fish to shore, threatening both the livelihoods and food security of local communities. With eradication programmes cited as largely unsuccessful, attention turned towards the possibility of repurposing the aquatic plant as a sustainable resource, attracting chemist Richard Arwa.
The school project caught the attention of the National Environment Trust Fund whose support catalysed the decision to turn the classroom experiment into a business. With the Kenyan government actively promoting the use of water hyacinth for economic benefit in the Lake Victoria region, CIST East Africa moved from strength to strength, developing its first product in 2018 to initiating small scale production in 2019. Systematically using the plant to support the local economy, CIST became a private limited company in 2020.
Today, with support from COVIDaction Local Production and Local Solutions (LPLS), CIST East Africa is investing in the resources needed to upscale its production capacity of hand sanitisers and conduct its own preliminary quality control analysis, improving efficiency to support the revised production target. There’s one problem, however, water hyacinth travels with the wind and is only available locally for six months of the year.
Leveraging local partnerships
Keen to keep the momentum, CIST East Africa has entered a research partnership with the Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute (KIRDI), Maseno University, and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST). Together, they are distributing seeds to local farmers for crop production, allowing CIST East Africa to trial alternative sources of raw material.
Whilst sugar cane is the predominant raw material used for ethanol production, it carries a high cost of production throughout the value chain as well as high taxation. One viable alternative has already been found in molasses extracted from beet roots, widely grown for animal feed twice annually. Producing a higher yield than sugar cane, it is already enabling local farmers to diversify their crop whilst encouraging competition between remaining sugarcane producers, as well as providing an additional source of revenue for the government. Ultimately, as none of the raw materials CIST East Africa rely on are imported, diversifying their production to include hand sanitisers will support local fishers, farmers, and suppliers for years to come. Even as the vaccine roll out is underway, the ethanol produced can be repurposed for a multitude of products from biofuels to surgical spirits to industrial applications. In fact, Arwa is already looking into biogas production, capitalising from the residuals of ethanol production.
“No man can stand alone and no innovator has all the experience, knowledge and connection to be successful by himself.”
Arwa is keen to build a cycle of peers for mutual success. Working with the Kenya National Innovation Agency amongst other stakeholders, he is developing a framework to support the commercialisation of ideas from different start-ups, forging collaborations, consolidating, and disseminating relevant data to enhance the understanding of the start-up ecosystem. Such efforts will feed into an annual national start-up summit to celebrate the nexus of ambitious innovators and entrepreneurs, bringing together policy makers, investors, and partners to propel the innovation ecosystem forward. As Arwa says, “no man can stand alone and no innovator has all the experience, knowledge and connection to be successful by himself.”
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