The Cartier Women’s Initiative awards is an annual competition giving much-deserved recognition to socially responsible women entrepeneurs from six world regions – including this year, for the first time, the Middle East and North Africa.

Lorna Rutto from Kenya, left her banking job to tackle the mounting problem of plastic waste in Nairobi by turning the discarded material into plastic fence posts.

Rutto’s company, EcoPost now employs 15 staff, while also drawing on the services of some other 300 other Rworkers, including marginalized local women, who buy plastic from street ‘scavengers’ to sell to EcoPost.

As well as removing unsightly plastic waste from the landscape – so far, more than 600 metric tonnes – the posts reduce deforestation.  “For every 25 posts we make, we save a fully matured cedar tree’, says Rutto.

Also customers love EcoPost’s new product, because they don’t rot. “They are resistant to termites; easy to work with, just like timber; and environmental friendly”

As one of this year’s six winners, Rutto will receive vital publicity, $US20.000 in funding and ongoing business coaching from Cartier and its partners INSEAD and McKinsey & Company. Already she has been able to refine her business plan, which could see the scheme rolled out across Kenya.

Via: Arise Magazine