A windy, narrow dusty path off the Thika Superhighway in Juja leads to a land that suddenly dips into a series of deep quarries—abandoned scars of stone mining that for years carried little economic value.

From a casual observation one would dismiss the land in Ndarugo, Juja as useless. But not for one man who saw a business opportunity in the wasteland.

He has quietly transformed the quarry into a hub of industrial activity. Chimneys rise from its depths, scrubber systems hum steadily, and specialised trucks roll in daily. It is not a factory in the conventional sense. It is a hazardous waste treatment plant—one of the most advanced in the country.

“This land was idle,” says Charles Kangere, founder and director of Tranbiz Hazardous and Recycling Waste Solutions that started in 2009.

“It was unsafe, waterlogged, and doing nothing for the economy. We looked at it and asked—how do we turn wasted land into productive infrastructure?”

Mr Kangere’s route into waste management was not obvious. Trained as an engineer, his early career revolved around servicing boilers and incinerators for hospitals and industrial facilities. He was employed full-time but ran a side business fixing broken incinerators, and occasionally, fabricating new ones.

“I was constantly being called by hospitals,” he says. “Their incinerators would break down, and waste would start piling up.”

Carving a niche

Through this service calls, Mr Kangere found a niche, a problem that begged to be solved. “From my observation, medical waste management was costly, complex and heavily regulated, yet hospitals were forced to handle it internally despite it not being their core function. They had to deal with licences, staff, energy costs, and compliance audits. It was expensive and operationally distracting.”

What he identified was a classic market failure: fragmentation. Every hospital was running its own small, inefficient waste system. “I thought, what if we collect all this waste, bring it to one place, and process it properly? It would be cheaper, safer and more efficient,” he says.

Charles Kangere, founder and C.E.O of Tranbiz Hazardous and Recycling Waste Solutions at the Juja facility August 15, 2025.

Photo credit: Pool

Modest beginnings

Unlike many capital-heavy industrial startups, Tranbiz did not begin with large upfront financing.

Mr Kangere started lean by leveraging technical skills, personal savings and early client revenue before progressively reinvesting cash flows into equipment and capacity.

Tranbiz’s modest beginnings were in Nairobi’s Industrial Area with a single incinerator and one truck. Mr Kangere handled client relationships, collections and operations. His first customers were hospitals he had previously worked with as an engineer.

“Once they realised outsourcing was cheaper than running their own incinerators, demand picked up,” he says.

Over time, the company expanded beyond healthcare into industrial and hazardous waste, attracting pharmaceutical manufacturers, food processors, supermarkets and government institutions seeking compliant disposal solutions for rejected or expired products.

Today, Tranbiz operates from Juja with a fleet of specialised vehicles, some dedicated exclusively to medical waste and employs nearly 100 people, most drawn from the surrounding community.

“In Nairobi alone, industrial waste volumes run into roughly 24,000 metric tons,” he notes. “If we are only handling about 25 percent of that, and there are only a few serious players, it tells you how big the opportunity is.”

While diversification provides a wider safety net for many industries, Mr Kengere chose deep specialisation. Medical and hazardous waste, he says, require capital-intensive infrastructure, trained personnel and regulatory compliance, barriers that limit competition and protect margins.

As their volumes increased, so did operational costs, particularly energy costs associated with incineration. Mr Kangere began questioning whether burning everything made sense.

“When you start incinerating large volumes of industrial waste, especially plastics, the carbon footprint is high,” he says. “And commercially, it doesn’t always make sense.”

Strategic shift

That realisation marked yet another strategic shift. Tranbiz invested in segregation and recycling, separating waste streams before disposal. Plastics are sorted by type, shredded and pelletised. Paper and cartons are baled and sold back into manufacturing supply chains. “There is value in waste,” Mr Kangere says. “Once you start seeing it that way, the economics change.”

Even incineration by-products are repurposed. For example, ash, which previously was a disposal problem, is mixed with cement and used to make paving blocks. While not yet commercialised at scale, the innovation reduces disposal costs and extends the value chain.

A walk through the Juja facility reveals an operation designed for control and compliance. Medical waste arriving at the gate is logged, stored overnight and processed the following day. Waste is sorted by colour codes and moisture content before incineration.

Collected medical waste before incineration at Tranbiz Hazardous and Recycling Waste Solutions Juja facility, August 15, 2025.

Photo credit: Pool

The incinerators operate at temperatures of up to 1,200 degrees Celsius, using a dual-chamber system. “The primary chamber burns the waste,” he explains. “The secondary chamber burns the smoke and remaining particles.”

Emissions then pass through a five-stage scrubbing system, where gases are washed, condensed and filtered before release.

Environmental audits are conducted every six months to ensure emissions meet safety standards. “This is not just burning waste. It is engineered processing.”

Chain-of-custody protocols

Energy inputs include electricity, industrial diesel and critically, the waste itself. “Waste burns,” he says. “It contributes to maintaining high temperatures, though we still inject additional energy.”

Hazardous waste handling is not cheap. Staff must be trained, regularly tested, and equipped with protective gear. Facilities must meet strict regulatory standards. Mr Kangere argues that these costs, while high, create a moat. “Not everyone can do this properly,” he says. “Compliance is expensive, but it builds trust.”

That trust is critical for clients handling sensitive waste such as medical records, pharmaceutical rejects and financial documents.

Tranbiz, Mr Kangere says, applies strict chain-of-custody protocols, including sealed vehicles, CCTV surveillance and supervised destruction. “Clients can accompany us from collection to destruction. Once waste enters here, it never leaves in its original form.”

Biggest barriers

Capital expenditure is one of the biggest barriers in the waste industry, as imported machinery is expensive and slow to replace. Mr Kangere has responded by fabricating much of Tranbiz’s equipment locally. “The shredders you see here, we built them ourselves,” he says, pointing to a newly commissioned incinerator.

Local fabrication gives the company flexibility over design and maintenance, though materials remain costly. “A single refractory brick costs over Sh300, and you need more than 10,000,” he explains. Most specialised inputs are still imported. “If we had more local suppliers or better access to materials, scaling would be faster.”

Despite this steady growth, capacity remains a constraint. Demand for compliant waste disposal has increased sharply as enforcement tightens and environmental awareness grows.

“The real measure of impact is demand,” Mr Kangere says. “Companies that were dumping waste are now actively looking for proper solutions.” Tranbiz is already planning expansion. It has acquired land for a larger, more modern facility and is in discussions with strategic partners to support capital-intensive growth.

Tranbiz growth plans

Their expansion is regional as it has established operations in Uganda.

“Our clients moved and wanted the same service standards,” Mr Kangere says. “So we followed them.” Next on the roadmap are Rwanda and Tanzania, markets which Mr Kangere believes will face similar waste management challenges as industrialisation accelerates.

At the heart of Mr Kangere’s vision is a reframing of waste, from liability to economic input. “If recycling is done properly, waste becomes a resource. Plastic, paper, even the ash you see here, everything has potential value.”

He points to declining availability of discarded PET bottles as evidence that recycling markets are already reshaping behaviour. “The goal is fewer dumpsites and more material circulating back into the economy.”

Mr Kangere urges Kenyans to relook their relationship with waste across different classes. “Waste is not the end of something, it is the beginning of something new.”

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