Explore India and Kenya’s opportunities in waste management with our new guides, highlighting high-impact sub-sectors and innovative financing solutions for sustainable growth.
To effectively support and develop green entrepreneurship in India and Kenya, investors need direct and accurate knowledge of the business ecosystems and their opportunities.
On this page, you will find Introductory Investment Guides along with deep dive guides on high-impact sub-sectors in each country, including organic waste management, plastic waste management, wastewater management, and integrated waste management.
These reports were developed as part of ANDE’s Access to Green Finance Project, with grant support from the IKEA Foundation.
India presents significant opportunities for new businesses to create value by leveraging agricultural, food and biomass waste. Agricultural biomass, which primarily consists of post-harvest crop residue and waste from livestock, is the largest source of waste in India – the country generates approximately 350 million tonnes annually. Agricultural and biomass waste generation is also expected to increase as food production increases, especially for staple and cash crops like rice, wheat, maize and cotton. Biomass is used in diverse applications from fodder for cattle and household cooking to the production of biogas, manure and renewable fuels such as bioethanol and biodiesel.
Biomass caters to a substantial portion of India’s rural energy demand, fulfilling approximately 80% of it. Low-cost biomass solutions play a particularly significant role in rural settings, where small-scale energy needs predominate. Conversely, more sophisticated biomass technologies are used in applications such as energy generation or fuel production, especially for large-scale operations. These opportunities relate to improved collection, waste-to-energy solutions, and diverse biomaterials.
India is a significant player in the global e-waste landscape, contributing approximately 4.1 million tonnes of electronic waste (e-waste) in 2022, which accounts for approximately 7% of the world's total e-waste output. In 2021, one-third of India's e-waste was managed through formal and informal channels, with 80 to 90% of e-waste management operations handled by the informal sector. By 2030, India's e-waste output is expected to escalate significantly, reaching approximately 9 million tonnes (based on our estimates), which would represent about 11% of the global e-waste forecast for that year (82 million tonnes). India’s e-waste and LiB recycling sector offers multiple avenues to create value through innovative business models. The key opportunities range across advanced metal and rare earth extraction, integrated recycling, interim recycling for high-demand metals, second-life electronics and batteries. These cascade into specific opportunity areas across the value chain, which are summarized in this report.
This guide focuses on the management and handling of municipal solid waste (MSW) from its initial collection to how it is processed and dealt with at landfills and dumpsites. It also covers some solid wastes with lower-value recycling potential or volumes, e.g., biomedical waste, paper waste, and base metals from non-electronic waste sources, such as aluminium and copper. Managing the close to 60 million tonnes of MSW that India generates annually is a daunting challenge. 90% of that waste is apparently collected but lower levels of processing – around 50% – show a significant amount is either not processed or remains unaccounted for, highlighting inefficiencies in waste management systems. Projections indicate a staggering increase in MSW generation, nearly tripling to 165 million tonnes by 2031. There are significant opportunities to improve waste processing and resource recovery in India’s MSW sector through decentralization, automation, and logistical improvements.
India grapples with a substantial plastic waste challenge. In 2021, according to government data, the country generated nearly 26,000 tonnes of plastic waste daily, amounting to approximately 4.1 million tonnes over the year. However, other estimates state that the actual figures are more than double, with an estimate from a recent Nature paper, stating that India generated 9.3 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2023. A significant portion of that waste, approximately 75%, consists of three primary polymers: polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), with the remainder coming from other polymers such as polystyrene (PS), high-density polyethylene (HDPE), low-density polyethylene (LDPE), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The key opportunities for plastic circularity in India are emerging around enabling higher-quality recycled outputs, packaging solutions and circularity in traditionally hard-to-recycle segments, such as flexible and multilayer plastics. These cascade into specific opportunity areas across the value chain, which are summarized in this report
This landscape guide is intended to outline India’s current context in recycling and circularity, with a focus on the investment potential, opportunities and business models in the ten most significant waste streams in India. It provides a framework for how investment potential in a waste stream can be determined, which covers five areas that define that potential: market size and growth; investable start-up pipeline; product readiness; policy support; financing needs and gaps. The guide also includes a historical outline of investments and funding in each waste stream and outlines the roles and participation of various types of equity funders, along with the potential and participation of non-dilutive funding options.
Every day, Kenya produces over 24,000 tons of waste, amounting to 8.8 million tons annually. Most of this waste is currently mismanaged, with more than 75% of waste in Kenya being incinerated or disposed at dumpsites. Moreover, Kenya is home to two of the world's 50 largest landfills – Dandora in Nairobi and Kibarani in Mombasa – highlighting its significant waste management challenges. Mismanaged waste in Kenya poses several environmental and health risks, which local actors are yet to comprehensively address. The proximity of landfills to residential areas in Kenya negatively impacts the quality of life of nearby communities and poses severe health risks by contaminating local land and water resources. In addition, waste incineration releases toxic pollutants into the air, water and soil and produces hazardous ash that can contaminate the environment and pose health risks to nearby communities. This study identified 16 small and growing businesses (SGBs) providing integrated waste management services. Employing a mixed-methods approach to conduct a deep dive into the integrated waste management sub-sector in Kenya.
Organic waste, which amounts to 5.72 million tons every year in Kenya, spans diverse sub-categories including food waste, yard waste, animal waste, agricultural waste, wood waste, organic sludge, biodegradable waste and human waste (faecal sludge). Rural households typically compost around 75% of their organic waste, but only 25% is composted in urban areas. Although organic waste degrades quickly and does not stay in the environment, it emits methane emissions during degradation or incineration. The high prevalence of open defecation due to inadequate sanitation systems further contributes to these challenges, as only 30% of the population has access to safely managed sanitation services.Effective organic waste management can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, deforestation and soil degradation by providing sustainable alternatives to fuel, charcoal, wood and chemical fertilizers. For instance, transforming organic waste into biogas saves about 370–400 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per ton, while turning it into fertilizers saves 350 kg CO2e per ton.Given the large volumes of recyclable material and its numerous applications, organic waste management is one of the most developed waste management sub-sectors in Kenya. Out of 122 waste management and circularity businesses identified through this study, 30 deal with organic waste, most of which were established over the past decade. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to conduct a deep dive into the organic waste management sub-sector in Kenya.
Kenya generates 880,000 tons of plastic waste per year, comprising various subcategories such as polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET), with PET, PP and polyester being the most prevalent. The widespread use of plastic, particularly in urban areas, combined with inefficient waste management systems, leads to the pollution of water resources and severe negative impacts on marine life. Furthermore, plastic waste disposed in nature or in landfills emits greenhouse gases during its decomposition. Out of the 122 businesses identified through this study, 17 businesses operating in the plastic waste management sub-sector in Kenya have been identified, covering applications ranging from plastic waste reduction, recycling into new plastic products and waste conversion into energy. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to conduct a deep dive into the plastic waste management sub-sector in Kenya. Out of the 122 businesses identified through this study, 17 businesses operating in the plastic waste management sub-sector in Kenya have been identified, covering applications ranging from plastic waste reduction, recycling into new plastic products and waste conversion into energy.
Kenya generates substantial volumes of wastewater from domestic, industrial and agricultural sources — amounting to 800 million litres per day from domestic use alone.2 The country faces significant challenges in managing this wastewater effectively, which increases pressure on limited local freshwater resources. For instance, only 30% of the 400 million litres of wastewater generated daily in Nairobi undergoes treatment, and only 5% of wastewater from offsite sanitation management (OSM) is effectively treated because of failures in the sewage system, a lack of treatment infrastructure and facilities operating below capacity. These problems are exacerbated as transport trucks resort to illegal dumping in nature due to high discharge costs. As wastewater contains contaminants such as chemicals, oils and human waste, this results in heavy pollution of water bodies, endangering aquatic ecosystems and public health. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to conduct a deep dive into the wastewater management sub-sector in Kenya. Our study identified 27 active businesses in this field, including a few growth-stage businesses which have achieved scale through innovation, acquisition of effective technologies, and establishing strategic partnerships, such as the Fresh Life partnership with Regen Organics to convert waste collected by Fresh Life.
Kenya's waste management and circularity sector is rapidly emerging as a critical area for sustainable investment. Across the ten sub-sectors and 122 businesses identified within this space in KOIS and ANDE’s Introductory Guide to Investing in the Waste and Circularity Sector in Kenya , four key sub-sectors have demonstrated particularly high potential for investment. Those sub-sectors are organic waste, plastic waste, wastewater, and integrated waste management. This investment guide outlines the complex landscape of the sector, highlighting critical financing needs and investment strategies. While detailed deep-dive guides have been developed to explore each of the four key subsectors, this guide focuses on the financial dynamics that underpin successful investments. It examines the varying financing needs across the different stages of business maturity and sub-sectors. Moreover, it highlights the key factors of success for waste management and circularity businesses, investment trends, gaps and opportunities for innovative finance solutions that could shape the sector. Finally, this guide provides insights into how investors can strategically position themselves and better catalyse investment to grow the sector.
Kenya's waste management and circularity sector offers significant opportunities for investors, driven by economic growth, increasing waste generation, growing regulations and innovations. This introductory guide is the first in a series that also includes investment guides that deep dive into each of the highest opportunity sub-sectors in Kenya’s waste and circularity sector: plastic waste, wastewater, organic waste and integrated waste management. These guides provide further information on trends, opportunities, policies and challenges, as well as further details on the main identified business models and their financing needs and case studies of successful businesses.
In partnership with the IKEA Foundation, ANDE set out in 2021 to understand and bolster support for green entrepreneurial ecosystems in India and Kenya to help both countries adapt to the effects of climate change. The project brought together donors, investors, enterprise support organizations, policymakers, and entrepreneurs to identify and support solutions to propel the growth of green enterprises in India and Kenya.