At the Kisumu County hospital, a heavy cloud of smoke bellows.
At the furthest corner, the red-hot flames cast a blanket of heat around the incinerator.

A designated worker occasionally opens the door to feed in coloured bags of trash collected from the hospital.
Incineration has been the primary method of medical waste disposal in Kenya. While effective at killing pathogens, traditional incineration has been flagged for releasing greenhouse gases and microplastics into the atmosphere.

In 2025, a study published in the Journal of sustainable research in Engineering found traces of microplastics in Nairobi, Ngong and Mathare rivers with a concentration of between 0.22 to 0.92 particles per litre.

In 2018, a study published in the African journal of marine science also found 50% of tested samples of Tilapia fish from Lake Victoria contained microplastics.

Fredrick Moi, the director of public health at Kisumu’s largest referral hospital says plastic waste contributes to a bulk of waste materials at the hospital.

“We have injection plastics, water bottles, IV lines and others and what we are trying to do is to slowly phase out incineration by looking at how we can shred, and detoxify these plastic materials that we can then repurpose into something like building blocks”, he says.

A New Dawn

A few metres from the incineration plant, a public health officer ushers us into a room with a metallic structure.

The blue machine rumbles with a quiet hum. Fredrick Moi inspects the machine, explaining how the multimillion microwave shredder contributes to the sustainable management of medical waste at the facility.

“The machine does not emit any smoke. We introduce high temperatures of up to 100 degrees. The waste is shredded and then it moves to another chamber for autoclave which basically detoxifies the waste” Moi says.

At the back of the room, a pipe to let out fumes is stationed. Moi says, compared to the heavy soot from the incinerator, the fumes are harmless to the environment.

A similar machine has been installed at the Nakuru Level 5 Hospital. The machine can treat an average of 250 kilograms of hazardous waste daily. Following a similar pattern, the medical waste, which is sorted at source, is first disinfected, shredded and then autoclaved before being moved to the Gioto dumpsite 4 kilometres away.

NEMA regional director Stella Kamwasir has advocated medical facilities to pool waste, especially plastic medical waste for better management.

“The most preferable way to recover material from the medical waste will be energy recovery. The incineration systems may be combined with other energy production systems either through micro turbine systems or related systems that will generate energy also for the same facilities.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by Pamela Stelle, a public health consultant based in Kisumu.

“We need to look at the culturally adaptable means that we can employ particularly in rural health facilities which have to come all the way to bring their waste to one of the two points in the county for disposal.”

The journey towards sustainability

For decades Kenya has been on a robust push for environmentally sound waste management practices. Alongside other African nations, Kenya participated in the negotiations of the Basel convention of 1989.

The delegation, headed by the second president Daniel Arap Moi, had advocated for a total ban on dumping of toxic waste in Africa, which was not adequately addressed by the Basel convention at that time.

Subsequently, the Organisation of African Unity, now known as the Africa Union, passed resolution 1199 in February 1989, paving the way for the formation of a treaty that would protect the African continent from what they described as garbage imperialism.

These deliberations gave rise to the Bamako Convention, which was adopted in 1991, and came into force seven years later. Despite signing in 2003, Kenya officially ratified the convention 20 years later in 2023, and submitted its instruments of ratification to the Africa Union Commission in June 2025.

Despite the late ratification, Kenya has been taking steps to align various legislation and policies with the convention. Under the Environmental Management and Coordination Act (EMCA), the term “hazardous waste" covers substances outlined in the convention which includes radioactive materials and chemicals banned in their country of origin.


Section 144 of EMCA also prescribes steep fines of up to 4 million Kenya shillings, 40,000 USD, and strict jail terms for the unauthorized disposal or illegal movement of hazardous waste, fulfilling article 9 of the Bamako Convention, which requires nations to impose sufficiently high criminal penalties to deter violations.

Other legislative frameworks include the waste management regulation 2024 which covers the issuance of waste tracking notes in accordance with article 6 of the Bamako convention, as well as the sustainable waste management Act 2022, which fulfils article 4 of the convention.

Emerging frontiers
Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics shows that electronic waste in the country measured a towering 53,559 metric tonnes in 2024.

The report revealed that small household devices such as toasters and vacuum cleaners accounted for nearly 37% of total e-waste. Televisions, laptops, and tablets on the other hand accounted for 5,715 tonnes, highlighting the rising trend of improper disposal of electronic waste in Kenya.

In September 2025, nominated senator Peris Tobiko introduced the Electronic Equipment Disposal, Recycling and Reuse Bill, 2025 at the Senate.

The proposed law, among other things, mandates that e-waste collectors and recyclers obtain licenses from county governments and the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, with violations of these provisions punishable by fines of up to 50,000 shillings or six months’ imprisonment.

County executives responsible for the environment will be in charge of licensing e-waste collectors.

The bill prescribes a hierarchy of disposal facilities, starting from ward-level consolidation sites, connecting to a gazetted e-waste sorting centres at county level, on at least five acres and with a two-acre buffer zone.

Similarly, a national recycling plant is also to be set up by the Environment Cabinet Secretary in consultation with NEMA and must sit on not less than 30 acres, with a surrounding buffer of at least five acres.

Governors will be tasked with setting up and They will also be allowed to create smaller ward consolidation points for early collection and aggregation.

“The Cabinet Secretary, in consultation with NEMA and the Council of County Governors, may prescribe standards, guidelines and requirements for the establishment of the National E-waste Recycling Plant, e-waste sorting sites, and ward consolidation sites,” the Bill reads.