Sanergy is disruptive waste management company based in Nairobi, Kenya. For close to 10 years now, Sanergy has been providing safe-sanitation services to Kenya’s urban slums where contemporary flush and sewer waste management doesn’t exist. Through their container-based sanitation approach, Sanergy has been able to manufacture and distribute over 2500 toilets that serve over 100,000 people a day. This equated to over 6000 tonnes of human waste collected and treated in 2018.
Over the two week period that I have been at Sanergy, I have been received very warmly, and have quickly felt comfortable and welcome in the work environment. The office itself is beautiful, with a completely open layout which encourages employee interaction. The open office layout also create makes clarification, problem solving and teamwork easy. I’m currently involved with Sanergy Limited, a branch of the company that deals with waste conversion and the process of attaining financial sustainability at Sanergy. All in all, I am thoroughly impressed by how much Sanergy has been able to achieve in less than a decade.
In my two weeks here, I have got to interact with the company at a personal level. On my first day, I was taken through a briefing and on-boarding session that introduced me to the vision, mission, and corporate structure of the company. It was interesting to see how the office dynamics of a hybrid company like Sanergy would play out, given that both its profit and non-profit side operate under the same roof. Interestingly, these two sides operate in a somewhat semi-autonomous nature, with employees clearly divided between these sides, save for a few “overlap” employees that bridge the divided interest of the two sides. Sanergy’s team, while diverse, is comprised of mainly Kenyan employees, with 60% of their 250-person team being from the community that they work in. Sanergy seems to have perfected balance in this structure as operations run very efficiently at the head quarters.
Perhaps what has intrigued me most are two fundamental philosophies that underpin Sanergy’s quest to financial freedom and sustainability : re-use and innovation.
- Innovation : At the back of Sanergy’s headquarters lies a collection of several toilet prototypes that Sanergy had piloted for their in-house residential toilet. These pilots are there as living proof of the various stages of growth that Sanergy has gone through before they arrived at a product they deemed satisfactory (at least for the moment). Not surprisingly, this philosophy is pushed beyond the products, and Sanergys’ corporate structure and system of governance is itself changing - always trying to find a better solution to tackle the challenges that come up. Throughout the office, there’s an acceptance of failure as a lesson to build upon your next solution. This philosophy allows Sanergy to stay on their toes and push the limits of efficiency and service delivery.
- Re-use: Towards achieving their quest for sustainability, both financially and environmentally, Sanergy has had to think hard about how to manage their waste to ensure maximum returns with minimum loss. Once Sanergy collects human waste from their toilets, they take the human waste through a treatment process to convert it into organic fertilizer. But even this process is streamlined to produce the most impact, and so Sanergy has incorporated Black Soldier Flies who feed off the human waste and who are later sold as a protein source and as a substitute for omena (fish from Lake Victoria). This has seen Sanergy increase their revenue stream as well as produce high quality organic fertilizer. Through this, Sanergy has somehow found a way to make build a revenue stream through a substance mostly regarded as refuse.
I’m incredibly honored to be part of the Sanergy team for now and to work with them and study them as they tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. Over the next couple of weeks, I hope to interact with more teams from Sanergy and get their point of view of the company and of the work they do. I’m excited for what I can learn in the upcoming 6-7 weeks.