Circular Retrofitting for Sustainable Industrialization

GeckoCir explores the possibility that countries such as Kenya can gain advantages from early entry into circular ways of organizing production activities, such as exchanging resource streams and building business synergies.The benefits are that manufacturing companies in Kenya may increase their resource efficiency, reducing raw material and waste handling costs, therefore reducing insecurity of supply, and potentially develop high-value upcycled products out of cheap residues, which ultimately can increase their competitiveness national and internationally.  

Generally, bio resources are perishable and difficult to upcycle; most if these resources are either sent to landfills or at best down cycled into feed or energy, even in ambitious new eco-industrial parks. In GeckoCir, we aim to research deeper into the upcycling opportunities for industrial side-streams combining business, policy, and natural sciences (biorefinery, biotech, food, chemistry and material research). 

The project is based at University of Copenhagen, collaborating with several Danish and Kenyan institutions such as the Danish Technological Institute, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture (JKUAT), University of Nairobi (UoN), African Center of Technology Studies (ACTS), as well as business associations in Kenya such as the Kenyan Association of Manufacturers (KAM) and Ruaraka Business Association (Rubicom). KAM and Rubicom play a key part in engaging the companies and creating trust and dialogue between the companies and GeckoCir researchers. Project leader is senior researcher Maj Munch Andersen, KU IGN, and project co-coordinator is prof. Willis Owino, from JKUAT. 

The companies selected for the project will go through a screening process (see below) that will evaluate the opportunities for circular retrofitting and industrial symbiosis based on the data collected about the resource flows (raw materials and waste flows) that are present in each production process. This data will be carefully managed and analyzed by the GeckoCir team following strict data management rules.

Kenya is one of the African countries with the strongest green and circular economy strategies in Africa. Noticeable the 'Green Economy Strategy and Implementation Plan' (GESIP) 2016-2030 and National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP) 2018-2022 targets the greening of Kenyan companies to achieve a low carbon, resource efficient transformation.

The relevance of GeckoCir lies in demonstrating the opportunities of ‘circular retrofitting‘ as a means of directing the industrialization pathway of Kenya and similar economies in a resource efficient and circular way, decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation.