 The two most common ways to process organic waste are composting and anaerobic digestion. While composting is the simpler and cheaper process, anaerobic digestion is better suited to large scale facilities. Anaerobic is such a, I mean in a way, very green and beautiful city, but at the same time hosting one of the largest landfills in Africa. And basically, jeopardizing a lot of the neighborhoods with like a lot of these construction landfills. And so it's like, I mean, we have the solutions that are right there. And somehow these solutions do not reach the people that should start reaching. So in this case, like, let's try to put like a, you know, this idea of trying to bring this educational information to people in a mindful way. So I think that's one of the core motivations. In today's episode, we speak to the brains behind Dudu Dunia, an initiative that was started in 2019 with the aim of transforming organic waste into something beautiful. Dudu Dunia is a small organization now, a small company that sprouted in 2019 as a result to try to encourage people to transform their organic waste into something useful. So we have developed beautiful kits to try to dignify waste. Try that waste does not just keep the back of our households, but we bring it to the place where we think it deserves. So in Dudu Dunia we try to encourage by the use of these kits, but as well as just informing people how they can transform it in any way within the household, shambas and put it in use these ways. The words Dudu Dunia actually mean a world of organisms or a world of insects. So if you pick up a teaspoon of soil, that teaspoon, the amount of microorganisms it has is far more than the total amount of people on this planet. So just food for thought. We treat soil as, you know, just dirt, but soil is alive. It has so much going on in the top layers and we really need to try and preserve that today with the way we do agriculture, we practice agriculture the way we produce food. We are really running that first top layer of soil which is kind of the core of food generation. So we really need to try and preserve that and replenish our soils rather than using fertilizers and pesticides. We are losing the actual nutrients of the soil. So the idea of Dudu Dunia is to be able to raise awareness about the level of microorganisms that are present in soil and how we need to interact with them. We need to keep them alive for us as eventually for humans to stay alive and for food production to continue. My house, for example, I don't throw any organic within the regular bin. So like from banana peel, coffee grounds, tea bags to the remaining of our lettuces, okuma wiki, pineapples, these crabs of like my foot, like anything. Like all the things that you would eventually eat or you are chopping things away, all that goes into a bin that then I give it up for composting, for my worms, for everybody to deal with and just transforming. I also started composting once I joined Dudu Dunia. So just seeing that transformation of organic waste into this beautiful black gold has been very enlightening for me. And yeah, I've just been sharing it with everyone and anyone I can find. And that's what we see with the community that interacts with us. Once you start composting, you just want everyone to discover it. We want to promote that whole circular economy mindset. And for us, it's around food. So for us to inculcate in our minds that once I buy food, it then always have to end up in the dustbin. So you can actually buy your food, eat it, your waste scraps, compost that and use that to regrow the food that you will eat. So you see this way it stays in the loop and you avoid as much as possible getting to the landfill. The initiative was birthed as a result of merged ideas between Maite and her friend Dhruvi. Well, basically we started together with Dhruvi, with my friend and we sort of started each of us in our household as something that we can demonstrate that you don't have to have a big house, a big garden and a big site in order to really properly process your waste. So somehow it was like the dream of two persons. But it's something that you can implement by yourself or by a community. Like in fact here in the apartment, as this thirst to try to bring everybody on board, we set up a bigger composting site where people can even bring their waste downstairs and process it despite the reduction of the space that we have available. We met in this permaculture training and as a result of that training we started having a lot of doodoo's in our house to also process our waste. So the idea was to try to do something around that and one of the first early initiatives we did it was as well to build doodoo toilets. So toileting with the waste is processed by composting worms. Composting worms are just amazing because they just process your waste and transforming into this gold black poo that is a huge beautiful fertilizer to get us composting, right? So we had tons of these doodoo's and in fact they are also part of our kits. If people want a composting kit with a composting worms they can have it or without them. So we thought the names sound really fun so we just stick with the name. Many are the methods used in waste management and Maite the co-founder of Doodoo Dunia tells us about theirs. We organise workshops in key places like we have partnered up with Mblango Farm this is our organic farm that is close to Limuru and there we sort of like organise workshops on composting, convert me composting and how to transform your waste as well partnered up with the candy, Shamba Cafe in which places we have performed as well workshops. Then now we are pushing much more into really collaborating with the schools. We have done it in a sort of way in Cagliole as well in Peponi, in Peponi school but it's something that we really would like to emphasise much more because of the fact of targeting children but as well the communities that live around the school using it as well during the weekends for other trainings, composting, sharing sites. People can bring their waste, they can compost it, they can share their compost because at the end you generate quite a bit of compost that you want to put into benefit, right? But we try to accompany the persons to say ok do you have any challenges? How can we improve? How can you like see this fits you or perhaps something else fits you? So we try to keep that part quite a bit of a space in our company. So I believe the word of mouth as well has been one of the main ways that we are getting as well people because being such a small, don't really have enough space. Yes, partnership and showing in different markets has been a way but this friend of like community and word of mouth has really been something that has worked very well for us to give us to know. Most of the scraps we generate in the kitchen are very rich in nitrogen. It's sort of the fuel of building blocks of, you know, the fuel of life somehow. So like these green lettuce and like banana spills, they have a lot of nitrogen and basically we mix those ones with something that is rich in carbon. We are most of us, I mean 30% of us is carbon, building blocks of all like trees, everything is carbon. So basically we combine these nitrogen rich products and these some carbon rich material, which you could be, for example, we use in the Udonia, we love to use what cocopeat or what we call remix powder, which is carbon in a way that has a beautiful texture and can combine very well with our organic waste. So once you put them together with the right amount of water, basically we are creating this amazing environment for the different bacteria, microorganisms, protozoa that are already in our waste to thrive, eat it, process it and binding with the carbon. And then the result is having this beautiful compost that you can use. The end product will, it can be used for feeding all your, you know, plants in the household, having a little garden in your household as well, and that will also regenerate all the soils that are harmed. It will like, for example, you have these dusty places where people have just been walking or have been even, like you start having compost, you just bring to life that soil. So you can use it for giving presents to your friends so they can put them in their plants. Anything, like in our case, in my case specifically besides the plants, yes we do have like a food garden that we squeezed inside of this apartment. So it's the possibility to just transform your waste into fruit that afterwards you're going to be using again in your kitchen. So keeping in a circular sort of economy. What happens in a lot of places or in the dumping sites is that the waste is all accumulated, all piled up. You don't let oxygen to come, so even the microorganisms, they need oxygen to breathe. So then it's transformed anaerobically that releases gases that are smelly, that are harmful, and basically you can, I mean, that it doesn't let it transform as a compost. So what benefits does the initiative offer the society? We already have a number of users of our kits and training programs. On an average, I believe, on a monthly basis we're able to divert at least two tons of waste from landfill into beautiful compost. We would like to grow that number so that we would eventually like every household in Nairobi to be composting so that less waste ends up in landfill, less waste decomposes anaerobically, less methane gases are released, less greenhouse gases are released, and we would have a micro-impact on an urban city to be able to reduce the impacts of climate change and global warming. Due to Dunia, we don't work in isolation. So like you've seen our beautiful terracotta pots, we work with the pottery community. So we're working with some really skilled potters that help bring this idea to life. And then for our beautiful Kitenge covers also, we're working with women who help make this for us. So again, that way, you know, creating jobs. And the other aspect, we are working with some bamboo farmers from Kimakia Forest who help us make our shovels that we use in our furia kit and they don't go. So that way, we have, you know, contributed how we can to our economy. So Dunia also contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals, goal number 11 of sustainable and greener cities as well as climate action. We would love to see as many residents of Nairobi to embrace waste, to not be fearful of organic waste, to not just dump it in a bag and put it at the back of a garbage truck and then it disappears, you know, out of sight, out of mind. We would like to see more people embracing the process of composting and to be able to regenerate soil, to be able to embrace greenery, to be mindful of waste in general, to be able to segregate at source so that we are able to divert as much waste from landfill and instead we're repurposing it. And we're only throwing away the items that we can absolutely not reuse. Shalyn Wangi, the Marketing Director and Designer at Dodo Dunia, outlines some of the strategies used in marketing their initiative. Our biggest leverage point has been word of mouth. So once you start composting and you discover how amazing it is spreading the word to your friends, to your family and, you know, just aiming for all of us to be sustainable in how we manage our organic waste. So word of mouth is key. Then the second aspect is going for different markets. So as people are doing their organic produce shopping, then at the back of their mind, we want to be there for them to remember, oh, as I prepare this in the kitchen, I need to compost it. So just having that presence in the market has been very helpful for us. Then the third aspect is social media. So just sharing out there what is composting, how does it help our environment. Yeah, so leveraging on those three mediums is what we are focusing on. The response has been good. I must say for our kind of product, which is mostly behavior change, it takes time. So normally we see people warming up to the, you know, we see the curiosity. They are like, oh, what is composting? Then the next time they're asking, oh, when are you having your next workshop? I would like to know about it. Then after some time you see them converting and they want to either get a software kit at home or a Nudongo kit and they already want to start themselves. So for me, I've seen it creates the curiosity and then people slowly start picking it up. So yeah, I think it's an aspect of the business that we appreciate that behavior change takes time even just to decide to like change your practices. The main environmental problem associated with the disposal of waste is the potential risk posed to the soil. People have the assumption that, you know, it's organic, it's green waste. So it will decompose and go back into the earth. But when it's in a landfill, we've got layers and layers of rubbish. We've got toxic hazardous waste, we've got medical waste, we've got aluminium, we've got metals, we've got glass, we've got plastic which keeps on breaking down. We've got so many different layers of rubbish that it doesn't actually decompose in a normal way. It leaches with all the other components which are there in the dump site and it affects not only the communities that live around the dump site, it affects the air, it affects the water table because of all the leaches that penetrate through and go into the water table. It has a lot of harmful effects. Despite a few challenges here and there, the group hopes to continue offering composting solutions that make the environment greener and cleaner. Normally people think about compost as manure and somehow as smelly, something that brings a lot of like dutus or like insects and pests. So this association is something that I feel stops a lot of people from trying at least, they are fearful on that. And that's definitely a challenge. I was talking before about the ecosystem. I think the ecosystem in the city could be more conducive to start really opening the eyes to people, the solutions and other ways of doing things. I feel there's a huge gap at the schooling level of trying to bring that awareness in our young generations. So yeah, perhaps this is one of our biggest challenges. The ratio of efforts and perhaps of investments and returns that we are getting is always in the positive side. And as well, I would say when people start to get to know us, they feel really enthusiastic because they have been looking for this solution for a long time, never knowing that it existed. And so how we provide something that people were really looking for to have in their households. So that part really is encouraging of like saying, well, there's something needed but there's so much more to do. The simple things like disposing of waste, recycling, repurposing waste, reusing items, I think it is the government's duty to be able to inform the public and on other levels individuals can come in as well as corporates. Communities can come in and assist the government wherever there are shortfalls in managing waste. We are part of the environment and we need to really take care of it. There is no planet B like we always see. So if we want our children or other generations to enjoy what we already have, it's up to us to build these practices and start doing them simple things like segregating your waste, then taking care of our environment, not dumping things. I think just inculcating that in our behavior slowly by slowly you'll see the children picking it up and then we'll become the society that really takes care of what is around us and what takes care of us.