The Flipflopi project is a circular economy movement with the aim of advocating alternative uses for plastic waste.

We’re building on the success of building the world’s first recycled plastic sailing dhow to establish a Heritage Boat Building Training Centre to design and construct recycled plastic sailing vessels with local boat builders based on indigenous heritage, knowledge and skills.

Coastal communities globally are awash with plastic, due to both the increasing dependence on plastics and lack of sufficient waste management infrastructures.

Within the last three decades, more single-use packaging and products have been introduced and the demand has grown, however, global waste management systems have not. In Lamu, this is illustrated by an annual beach clean-up on a 12-km stretch of beach. On average they collect between 35-40 tonnes of plastic waste annually. To exacerbate the problem, there is only one waste disposal site on Lamu Island to cater for a population of 30,000. This area has no separation facilities and waste is left to pile up, blow across the island and into the ocean and in many instances is burnt openly.

Because many coastal communities and islands such as Lamu remain isolated from major towns and transport arteries they tend to be cut off from large-scale operations to dispose of and manage recyclable waste due to the cost of transport. Instead, community-based organisations have begun working to tackle the issue. However, these organisations have extremely limited capacity due to scope, funding and support. There are no cost-effective mechanisms to transport recyclable materials to the mainland. This means communities must be empowered to reduce plastic consumption and embrace a locally-led closed-loop waste management system.

Mitigating plastic pollution through Heritage Boat building is based on a successful prototype development, which in 2018 resulted in the world's first traditional sailing dhow made in Lamu; out of 7 tonnes of waste plastic collected from Kenya's shores and towns and covered in about 30,000 discarded flip flops (slippers). With funding through the SMEP Programme, the expansion of the Heritage Boat building is planned – thus providing alternative materials to the hardwoods currently used in construction. The funding also enables the project to collate data for more informed decision making, conduct R&D to improve and scale our product, build a training centre to develop the capacity of local community members to lead circular initiatives, solidify a business case and begin to market products and services and create a community-led waste collection network that will supply feedstock while mitigating plastic pollution.

For the sustainability of this project, we will build on our network of locally-led waste management and recovery centres to establish a sustainable ‘closed-loop’ post-consumer waste management practice. The Material Recovery Facility will serve the entire archipelago, connecting communities and creating networks to build a supply chain consisting of community waste sellers, segregators, transporters, and site staff who will collect, sort, wash and shred the plastic waste. We're developing this network through skill-sharing workshops and educational outreach. 

To tackle the continued dependence on single-use plastics within the community we continue to engage with local stakeholders to reduce plastic use, identify recycled plastic products that are desirable by the community and determine solutions for plastic waste hotspots to reduce its impact on the marine and coastal environment.

As much of the plastics are recyclable, affordable products can be made for local markets. We believe we can develop markets for these recycled products if the collection, sorting and preparing of plastics can provide a regular guaranteed supply of adequate quantities of waste plastics for reprocessing and recycling.

We specifically want to target the boat building market and offer an alternative boat building material other than the traditional hardwoods that have been used. In recent years, the cost of quality hardwood is constantly increasing in price and diminishing in availability while maintenance costs of wooden boats are extremely high. However, as plastic has shown us, it is for life. Our original Flipflopi prototype has shown that maintenance costs are minimal while building and material costs are similar, therefore, recycled boat building offers a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution to the plastic pollution problem that retains cultural heritage.

This case study has been created as part of Footprints Africa's work to build a comprehensive open-source database of circular economy initiatives in Africa. We are doing this in collaboration with the African Circular Economy Network (ACEN), as part of our programme to support the circular economy transition in Africa.

Image retrieved from https://www.theflipflopi.com