Joseph Nguthiru: Making plastic from weeds

On Kenya’s Lake Naivasha, local fishers struggle to manoeuvre their boats through mats of floating water hyacinth. The invasive weed spreads as far as the eye can see, blocking sunlight, depleting oxygen, reducing biodiversity and threatening livelihoods.  

Among the fishers is 27-year-old Joseph Nguthiru, from Nairobi. He reaches below the surface to grasp a thick green tangle of hyacinth by the roots and hauls it aboard. Nguthiru is the founder and CEO of HyaPak, a startup turning this aquatic nuisance into biodegradable packaging designed to be a stand-in for plastic.  

“Our solution at HyaPak is to use one problem, water hyacinth, to solve another problem, plastic waste pollution, while creating green jobs for local communities,” he says. 

See Joseph Nguthiru’s profile