Seventeen-year-old Pascal was tired of stepping around plastic bottles on his way to school. In his rural Ugandan village, empty containers littered roadsides and clogged drainage channels, especially during rainy season. 

That simple frustration sparked what would become a thriving recycling business, one of many youth-led environmental ventures emerging across East Africa. 

When Trash Becomes Treasure

Pascal’s breakthrough came through our Youth Livelihood Program, where he learned that environmental challenges could actually be business opportunities. Working with classmates, he began collecting those same plastic bottles that once annoyed him, transforming them into flower pots, dustbins, and water fountains.

The impact went beyond just cleaning up. Pascal’s team now runs community workshops teaching proper waste disposal, and his “proactive environmental protection efforts have significantly reduced plastic waste in local landfills.” More importantly, he’s shown other young people that they don’t need to wait for someone else to solve problems in their community.

From Kitchen Scraps to Chicken Feed

Meanwhile, 1,200 kilometers south in Tanzania’s Usambara highlands, students at Magamba Secondary School were dealing with their own waste problem. Food scraps were piling up, and the school’s livestock program was struggling with expensive imported animal feed.

Their solution was both simple and ingenious: Black Soldier Fly larvae. The students built bins where the larvae devour food scraps and farm waste, then harvested the protein-rich larvae as animal feed. The leftover frass becomes organic fertilizer. Kitchen waste transformed into valuable farm inputs.

This circular approach addresses a real economic challenge, livestock farmers in Tanzania can spend up to 70% of their costs on imported feed. When the Magamba team won first place at Tanzania’s national Enterprise Challenge in late 2024, they proved that environmental solutions can also be profitable ones.

Maggot Manure and Mountain Agriculture

Not far away in the Kilimanjaro region, Horombo Secondary School’s “Winning Patrol” club took a similar but distinct approach. They breed houseflies on kitchen and market scraps, collecting the maggot frass as organic fertilizer for local farmers.

This innovation tackles multiple problems at once. Tanzania’s agricultural sector employs 65% of the workforce but uses far less fertilizer than needed, only 19 kg per hectare compared to the 50 kg target. Chemical fertilizers are expensive and can degrade soil over time. The students’ maggot frass offers farmers a local, eco-friendly alternative while keeping organic waste out of landfills.

The Common Thread

What connects Pascal’s plastic recycling, Magamba’s fly farming, and Horombo’s fertilizer production isn’t just environmental impact, it’s our Youth Livelihood Program. All three projects emerged from this comprehensive initiative, which trains secondary students in leadership, financial literacy, and sustainable business development.

Our program’s results speak for themselves: 92% of participants create career plans, and 57% launch projects addressing climate or environmental issues. But the real success lies in changing how young people see challenges, not as obstacles, but as opportunities.

What This Means for World Environment Day

These stories offer a different narrative for World Environment Day, one where solutions are already happening at the grassroots level. Pascal, the Magamba team, and Horombo’s students aren’t waiting for international conferences or government policies. They’re turning waste into wealth right now, in their own communities.

Their success suggests a simple but powerful truth: the people closest to problems often have the clearest view of practical solutions. Supporting young innovators like these isn’t just about environmental protection, it’s about economic development, community resilience, and hope.

As we mark World Environment Day 2025, we invite you to join us in supporting the next generation of environmental leaders. Through our Youth Livelihood Program and partnerships with schools across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, we’re empowering young people to transform challenges into opportunities.

     WRITTEN BY: Chioma Okoro