What is the name of your organization?
Rethread Africa
What is the name of your solution?
Future Materials Lab
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
Engineering microbes to transform organic waste into sustainable biomaterials, replacing plastics and creating waste-free cities.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Nairobi, Kenya
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
Kenya
What type of organization is your solution team?
Hybrid of for-profit and nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Across developing cities, the waste crisis is spiraling out of control, driven by two interconnected challenges: overflowing landfills and a crumbling waste collection infrastructure. On one end, landfills - filled with non-biodegradable plastic waste - are pushing urban centers to their breaking point. On the other hand, municipal waste management systems are overwhelmed, underfunded, and ill-equipped to handle the sheer volume of waste, the majority of which is organic.
Take Nairobi, for example - home to East Africa’s largest landfill, Dandora, which was declared full over two decades ago yet still receives 2,000 tons of waste daily. While single-use plastics were banned in 2017, the city’s waterways remain choked with plastic waste, and its informal settlements bear the brunt of unchecked dumping and burning, exacerbating air pollution and public health risks.
Meanwhile, open-air food markets, restaurants, hotels, and residential areas generate mountains of organic waste daily - waste that could be repurposed but rots in landfills, releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than CO₂. The burden of this inefficiency falls on informal waste pickers, who lack support and economic opportunities, while cities struggle to keep up with a waste management system that is in collapse.
What is your solution?
We are eliminating landfills in developing cities by harnessing microbes to convert organic waste into biodegradable biomaterials.
Our approach leverages synthetic biology and green chemistry to transform organic waste from markets, restaurants, and households into next-generation biomaterials. At the core of our innovation is Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) - a biodegradable polymer naturally produced by microbes. Unlike traditional plastics, PHA fully decomposes in soil and water, making it an ideal alternative for replacing fossil-based materials.
However, we are not developing PHA as a standalone material. Recognizing the limitations of existing bioplastics like Polylactic Acid (PLA), which requires industrial composting and does not fully degrade in the environment, we are also developing a series of bio-based polymer additives. These additives enhance the biodegradability of materials like PLA, enabling us to convert hard-to-decompose plastics into truly compostable materials.
Through targeted pilot programs, we are testing our biomaterials in horticulture and other industries, ensuring they are high-performance, scalable, and tailored for real-world applications. By bridging waste management and material innovation, our solution transforms organic waste into a circular resource, replacing plastics in critical sectors while eradicating landfills.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Our solution directly serves horticultural exporters in Kenya who rely on plastic-based packaging to preserve and transport flowers, fruits, and vegetables to global markets. With increasing restrictions on plastic packaging in the EU and other key export destinations, these exporters face growing pressure to adopt compostable alternatives or risk regulatory penalties and market exclusion.
Currently, Polylactic Acid (PLA) is the most widely available “bioplastic” alternative in this sector because it is already classified as a bio-based material in some EU countries, making it an easy replacement for conventional plastic packaging. However, being bio-based does not mean biodegradable or even better for the planet. PLA requires industrial composting conditions to break down, making it a major waste challenge in countries without such infrastructure. As a result, PLA-based packaging often ends up in landfills alongside conventional plastics, failing to provide a true circular solution.
Our innovation provides a superior, fully biodegradable alternative by integrating PHA with bio-based polymer additives that enable complete decomposition in natural environments. By offering a cost-competitive, regulation-compliant, and locally produced packaging solution, we help horticultural exporters maintain access to high-value markets while ensuring their packaging waste does not contribute to landfill overflow or environmental pollution.
