Country of Residence

Kenya

Age

18

Project title

Taka-Trace

Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence

Taka-Trace uses artificial intelligence to digitize plastic waste recovery from the ground up. By combining a mobile app for field-level collection auditing with automated material serialization, the platform tracks plastic directly from local collectors to recycled resin processors. This creates a clear, auditable paper trail across the circular supply chain, ensuring environmental claims are backed by solid proof.

Website URL(s) or social media handles.

Project Category

My project is an existing project that I started

Project Stage

Pilot-Stage (We’ve tried an activity or two)

Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?

While coordinating the Grow Together campaign across low-income settlements in Kisumu, our goal was simple: mobilize local youth to plant indigenous trees and reclaim green spaces. But as we worked in neighborhoods like Nyalenda, a stubborn reality kept tripping us up. Every site we tried to clear was choked with plastic bottles and clogged drainage lines. The turning point came on a hot afternoon while watching local collectors load heavy sacks of plastic. I spoke with a collector who spent his entire day gathering bottles, only to get underpaid because buyers couldn't verify the material's origin or quality. The community was doing the heavy lifting, but the link between informal collection and formal processors was completely broken. That was the spark. Planting trees was crucial, but our urban spaces needed a systemic fix for plastic. I realized that if we could put simple AI verification on a basic smartphone to help collectors scan and trace plastic right at the source, we could turn informal waste picking into a transparent, bankable supply chain. Taka-Trace was born from that ground-level hustle turning grassroots effort into verifiable impact.

The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?

In rapidly growing urban areas, plastic pollution isn't just an eyesore it is an economic and health bottleneck. Tons of single-use plastics end up choking local drainage lines, polluting waterways, and flooding informal settlements. The core issue isn't a lack of collection effort; it's a broken, untraceable supply chain. The frontline collectors doing the heavy lifting lack digital tools to verify material origin or quality. Because recyclers cannot audit this informal supply, collectors get squeezed on price, while massive amounts of reusable plastic still end up in dumpsites. This matters deeply because I’ve seen community cleanup efforts stall when there is no sustainable economic engine behind them. Informal waste pickers are essential to keeping our neighborhoods clean, yet they remain underpaid and invisible to formal markets. Fixing this is about environmental justice as much as technology. By bringing AI traceability directly to grassroots collectors, we build trust across the recycling chain, create dignifying green livelihoods, and protect our local ecosystems from long-term plastic damage.

Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.

Taka-Trace turns informal waste collection into a transparent, digital supply chain through a mobile application and cloud intelligence platform. On the ground, a waste collector opens the Taka-Trace app on a basic smartphone and scans a bundle of plastic. Using lightweight computer vision, the app instantly verifies the polymer type, assesses purity, and tags the geographic location. This converts unstructured waste into a verified, geotagged digital asset right at the point of collection. Once collected, the material moves to local aggregation centers where batches receive automated serialization tags linking physical plastic directly to our cloud platform. As the waste is sorted, processed, and melted into recycled resin pellets, every stage of the journey is logged. Recyclers and off-takers get a live dashboard showing exactly where, when, and from whom the recycled material was sourced, replacing manual record-keeping with verifiable data. By bridging the gap between informal collectors and industrial recyclers, Taka-Trace creates value at both ends. Collectors receive fair, transparent pricing based on real-time material quality, boosting their daily income. At the same time, brands and recyclers get double-verified, traceable feedstock that meets international circular economy standards. It makes plastic recovery measurable, profitable, and equitable for the grassroots communities doing the actual work.

Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?

We are currently testing Taka-Trace on the ground in Kisumu, where early field trials have already digitized over 500 kg of PET plastic that would have otherwise choked local waterways or burned in open dumpsites. Working directly with 45 informal waste collectors across urban settlements, our mobile app verification has helped them categorize plastic quality instantly at the point of collection, cutting out middleman disputes and increasing their daily earnings by roughly 25% per kilogram. Looking ahead, our goal is to expand the platform to onboard over 500 collectors and divert 120 tons of plastic from landfills within the next 12 months. This works because it replaces fragile goodwill with economic self-interest: when collectors earn dignified, fair wages and recyclers receive verified, auditable feedstock, waste recovery shifts from a community cleanup chore into a scalable, self-sustaining green enterprise.

Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?

Most waste tracking programs focus on the end of the supply chain, installing multi-million-dollar sorting machinery inside industrial facilities or relying on error-prone manual logbooks at large aggregation hubs. This leaves informal collectors, who handle the vast majority of urban waste recovery, entirely out of the digital loop. Taka-Trace flips this approach by bringing verification technology directly to the street, running lightweight computer vision on basic smartphones in the hands of frontline workers. Instead of relying on manual sorting or expensive laboratory testing, our app gives local collectors instant polymer identification and purity scoring right at the point of recovery. Scanning a bundle provides real-time verification of the plastic type, cutting out price disputes and eliminating material fraud before the waste ever reaches a processing plant. What makes Taka-Trace truly innovative is how it seamlessly connects informal grassroots labor with formal industrial markets. Tying field-level scans to automated cloud serialization tags creates a continuous, audit-proof paper trail for recyclers and global brands. It turns informal waste picking into a transparent, tech-enabled enterprise, ensuring that the financial value generated by circular economy tracking actually flows back to the community workers driving it.

How many people are on your team?

2

Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?

Vallary Lois - Team lead Andrew Anyona - Technical support

What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.

Over the next twelve months, our primary focus is optimizing our computer vision model so it runs fully offline on basic, low-cost Android smartphones. This ensures waste collectors operating in low-connectivity areas can scan and verify plastic without interruption. Technical upgrades aside, we are expanding our field operations beyond initial Kisumu testing sites to onboard over 500 informal collectors across regional recycling hubs. To make this growth self-sustaining, we are establishing direct off-take partnerships with industrial recyclers and consumer packaging brands that need verified, auditable recycled plastic. In tandem, we will integrate local mobile money payouts into the app, enabling collectors to receive instant payment as soon as a material scan is verified. Pairing guaranteed market access with immediate digital payouts will turn Taka-Trace into an essential tool for everyday waste recovery.

How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.

We bring people on board by meeting them directly where they work in neighborhood collection yards and informal sorting hubs. During our early pilot in Kisumu, we engaged 45 informal waste collectors through hands-on demo sessions. Rather than delivering abstract speeches on climate tech, we showed them how scanning plastic on a basic smartphone instantly verifies quality and secures higher payouts. That immediate financial benefit turned skeptical waste pickers into active partners. To build broader awareness, we have mobilized over 150 local youth during community cleanup drives and sorting workshops. These young volunteers help map high-density plastic pollution zones and teach households how to segregate waste at the source, transforming neighborhood residents into active contributors to local recovery networks. Looking ahead, we are launching a "Community Champions" program to scale our reach. We will train respected lead collectors as peer ambassadors who onboard fellow workers, run local recovery challenges, and demonstrate app features on the ground. Pairing local community leadership with digital payouts ensures our project stays grounded, trusted, and community-driven as we expand.