Numbers rarely capture what community waste work feels like on the ground, but they do show whether it is actually working. Looking back over the past twelve months of routes, buy-back weigh-ins and clean-up sign-in sheets, a few figures stand out enough to be worth sharing plainly, alongside what they do and don't tell us.
Growth in households and villages served
The households on our regular routes have grown substantially as we expanded from two villages to six — Kasarani, Sunton, Roysambu, Mwiki, Zimmerman, Hunters and Githurai now all have fixed weekly collection. That growth wasn't steady or evenly paced; it came in bursts, each one tied to a specific village or estate committee reaching out and committing to fixed collection days and segregation habits, rather than a planned, linear rollout on our part.
Recyclable plastic volume through the buy-back network
The volume of plastic moving through our buy-back points has grown even faster than household numbers alone would predict, a sign that more residents are sorting rather than dumping now that there's somewhere reliable to bring sorted material. Growth accelerated noticeably each time we opened a new fixed buy-back point — Roysambu, then Sunton, then most recently Githurai — suggesting that proximity, more than awareness alone, has been the main constraint on participation in buy-back selling.
Collectors, volunteers and local employment
Our trained collector and volunteer base has grown alongside the routes, most of them residents of the villages they now serve, consistent with our deliberate approach to keeping waste-related income local rather than importing labour from outside the areas we work in. This includes both formal collector roles and the informal buy-back selling that's become, for some young people in our service area, a genuine if modest source of income.
What clean-ups have recovered
Our monthly rotating community clean-up, now covering all six villages over a full cycle, has recovered a meaningful volume of both general debris and recoverable plastic from riverbanks, drainage channels and open dumping sites — material that would otherwise have continued sitting in places like the Mwiki riverbank or contributing to blocked drainage ahead of the rains. A share of what's recovered during clean-ups consistently turns out to be recoverable plastic rather than pure waste, reinforcing that even "dumped" material often still has recycling value if it's sorted rather than simply discarded again.
What these numbers don't show
We'd rather be honest about the limits of this picture than let the numbers stand in for a fuller story. These figures don't capture the villages still waiting for collection to reach them, the households on our existing route who still struggle with consistent segregation, or the informal dumping that continues in areas our route hasn't yet reached. Growth in what we can measure doesn't mean the underlying problem is solved — it means progress is real and measurable, which is different from complete.
Why we publish figures like these at all
We publish numbers like these not to claim the job is done — informal dumping is still a daily reality in parts of Kasarani — but because transparent reporting on where effort and community fee income actually go is one of the commitments we made when we registered as a CBO. Residents paying a weekly collection fee, or bringing plastic to a buy-back point, deserve an honest sense of what that participation adds up to at scale, not just anecdote.
What we're watching for in the year ahead
The clearest gap the past year's numbers point to is processing capacity relative to household willingness to segregate — residents have consistently been readier to sort and sell recyclables than our current sorting yard and buy-back infrastructure can fully support at scale. That's the direct reasoning behind our planned materials recovery point and the recent second sorting yard pilot in Zimmerman: closing that gap, rather than simply adding more villages to an already-stretched system.
How we plan to report on this going forward
We're moving toward publishing shorter, more frequent updates on key figures rather than relying solely on an annual reflection like this one, in direct response to resident feedback requesting more regular visibility into how the organisation is doing. Expect more frequent, smaller updates on our blog between now and next year's fuller reflection.
Why we chose to publish this reflection now rather than waiting for a perfect year-end summary
We considered waiting to publish a more polished, fully audited annual report, but decided a timely, honestly-caveated update was more valuable to residents than a more comprehensive document arriving months later. We'd rather share what we know now, clearly marked as internal operational data, than delay transparency in pursuit of a more formal document.
A note on how we'll revisit these figures
We'll return to this same set of figures — households served, buy-back volume, clean-up recovery, collector and volunteer numbers — at each future annual mark, specifically so residents and partners can track genuine year-over-year change rather than a fresh, differently-framed set of statistics each time. Consistency in what we measure and report, even when a given year's numbers are modest, matters more to real accountability than presenting whichever figures happen to look best in isolation.
Frequently asked questions
How is Kasarani Waste Solution's impact actually measured?
Through direct operational records: households on active routes, plastic weighed at buy-back points, and material recovered during community clean-ups, all tracked as part of our standard record-keeping as a registered CBO.
Are these figures independently verified?
They're drawn from our internal collection and buy-back records rather than third-party audit; we're committed to transparent, honest reporting of what those records show, including where progress remains incomplete.
Where can I see more detail on specific programmes?
Our blog covers individual programmes and expansions in more depth, and our About page covers our overall registration and structure.
We'll keep publishing updates like this as the numbers, and the gaps behind them, keep changing. Follow along on our blog, or get involved directly.