By Firmain Eric Mbadinga
Picture this: mineral water bottles picked up from the trash metamorphosing into tiles for homes and discarded yoghurt pots reborn as cobblestones.
This isn't just another mindboggling act from a Babs Cardini show, although what Guinean Gabriel Hawa Touré does with waste is nothing short of magic.
Touré has turned recycling plastic waste into a profitable venture in his native country, where mountains of trash pile up every year with no established scientific mechanism for their safe disposal.
According to one study, Guinea produced nearly 500,000 tonnes of plastic waste in 2023. This alarming statistic led Touré to establish a start-up in Conakry, the capital city, to transform this trash into sustainable building materials.
Touré's venture, Ziama Business Group, reflects what the 18th-century French chemist and philosopher Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier famously said, "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed."
At Ziama, discarded plastic items – bottles, packets, chairs, pots, pipes and toys — aren't treated like trash. They undergo a process of creative destruction that entails sorting and crushing before being processed into building materials.
Conscientious decision
The journey began with Touré trying to answer a simple question: "What can be done with plastic waste?"
The internet provided pointers to the possibilities of recycling. "I found quite a few solutions, read up, and trained myself theoretically and practically with tests and everything else that needed to be done," he tells TRT Afrika. "The recycling solution took off."
Touré could have tried his hand at any other business, but he didn't just want to make money. He aspired to make a difference.
"I got involved in this field through personal commitment," he says. "First and foremost, I am a citizen of Guinea, and I see all around me the proliferation of plastic waste that never rots and is produced in huge quantities. I thought something needed to be done."
Touré spared no expense to make his venture work. He invested time and savings into ordering the necessary equipment to shred the plastic and process it into building materials.
Intensive process
The process begins with the collection of waste, which Touré purchases from partners who classify and clean the waste. Once assembled, the waste is crushed and transformed into a material used to manufacture paving stones and roof tiles, among other things.
"We get waste directly from the capital because much of it is produced there. The fact that we are based in the capital also helps us reduce the accumulation of plastic waste in certain districts close to the unit," Touré tells TRT Afrika. "We plan to set up collection points in other towns, too."
Ziama doesn't intend to restrict itself to creating building materials out of plastic waste. Over the long term, the start-up aims to provide solutions to combat the proliferation of plastic waste and pollution.
Touré believes that driving change requires raising public awareness about protecting the environment.
Numbers stack up
In a country of nearly 14 million people, each person is estimated to produce at least 0.6 kilogrammes of plastic waste a day.
Touré finds this statistic, based on data available from the United Nations, alarming. "We need the authorities to acknowledge the monstrosity of this problem and provide technical and financial support for structures and institutions that can deal with this," he says.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 20 million tonnes of plastic waste from a global annual production of 400 million tonnes washes up on ocean shores.
Such a massive volume of plastic waste increases the likelihood of microplastics finding their way into fish and then onto people's plates, putting them at risk of diseases such as cancer.
Both the WHO and the UN advocate initiatives such as Touré's to creatively combat what is a growing global problem.
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