Replication market under evaluation
Kenya Plastic Waste Recovery Infrastructure & Recycling Data (2026)
The most developed recycled-material offtake market in East Africa, with mandatory extended producer responsibility creating funded demand for verified collection.
Model updated 2026
Country totals across profiled cities
- Cities profiled
- 2Urban agglomerations modelled in this directory
- Population covered
- 6.4million
- Unmanaged plastic
- 224t / day
- Informal collectors
- 7,500Estimated workforce already handling this material
Policy context: EPR regulations (2024) obligate producers to fund packaging recovery; plastic bags banned since 2017.
City profiles
| City | Population | Unmanaged plastic (t/day) | PET (t/day) | LDPE film (t/day) | Hub target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nairobi | 5.12M | 171.4 | 65.1 | 44.6 | 205 |
| Mombasa | 1.30M | 52.7 | 19.5 | 14.2 | 52 |
Methodology
How these figures are produced
- Urban population from national statistics offices and UN-Habitat urban agglomeration estimates.
- Municipal solid waste per capita from World Bank What a Waste 2.0 income-band and country figures.
- Plastic share of the waste stream from national waste characterisation studies where available, otherwise the regional band (8–13%).
- Unmanaged share from UNEP and OECD mismanaged-waste ratios for the country's collection coverage.
- Polymer split from published characterisation of East and North African urban packaging streams.
- Hub targets model one community aggregation point per ~25,000 residents; collector counts follow published informal-sector surveys.
These are transparent desk estimates, not field measurements. AfriloopX is pre-pilot: any figure will be replaced with primary, weighbridge-verified data once collection operates.
Working on plastic recovery in Kenya?
We share the full assumption set, source list and pilot design framework with municipal, donor and corporate partners.