Water hyacinths devastate waterways the world over. A startup in Kenya has found a way to turn the invasive plant into a plastic substitute. And give fishers a new source of income.
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00:00Water hyacinths as far as the eye can see. The pretty flowers are among the most invasive
00:13plants on earth. This infestation is on Lake Naivasha, one of the biggest lakes in Kenya.
00:21The area is known for its many flower farms. They use fertilizers in their farming,
00:25some of which end up in the lake through runoff. This makes the water hyacinths grow even faster.
00:34Satellite images show the invasive species as green areas on the lake.
00:39Most of the banks are overgrown, so fishing boats often get stuck in them.
00:47Something climate tech engineer Joseph Kithiru never wants to experience again.
00:52Having got stranded on the lake himself once, he now hopes to tackle two environmental challenges
00:57at once. What we're trying to look at is how do we use one problem, which is water hyacinth,
01:05to the other problem, which is plastic waste pollution. And now how we do this is that we
01:09work together with these fishermen who are affected at the lakeside. That's good news
01:13for fisherman Simon Macharia. His catch has been dwindling for years. The water hyacinths
01:19absorb the oxygen and block the light, so the fish no longer come here to spawn.
01:26Since the water hyacinths started growing in Lake Naivasha, we tried to get a solution from
01:31the government, but in vain. Then we found out about Hyapark. We harvest water hyacinth,
01:38dry it and sell it to them. We do business with them and they pay us.
01:4350 fishers are now involved. They deliver the dried plants to Hyapark, where they are first
01:47shredded and then mixed with eco-friendly additives. The liquid mass is poured into
01:52trays and left to dry. They process 150 kilos of hyacinths a week. The end product is designed
01:59for applications that would normally require plastic.
02:06One of those places in agriculture where we have a lot of seedling bags that we have to
02:10where we have a lot of seedling bags being packaged in plastic bags and we have our
02:16biodegradable bags that are inserted with the seedlings into the ground. As they decompose,
02:20they release nutrients that accelerate the growth rate of the plants, as well as you reduce the
02:25amount of water you use in irrigation. So far, they've harvested 20 hectares of hyacinths.
02:32The invasive plant now has a second life that instead nourishes the soil and other plants.