Circular Design Nairobi is a small, deliberate studio helping communities across Kenya maximize the resources they already have — by redesigning the products, services and systems that quietly turn them into waste.
Waste audits, material flow mapping, circular business model canvas, and policy advisory for municipalities and multinationals working across East African value chains.
Two-to-five-day co-facilitated labs for teams, universities, and NGOs — plus makerthons and hackathons that convene community, industry and academia on a single brief.
Ethnographic research, in-context prototyping, and a handover model that leaves a local team running the intervention with training, playbook and impact measurement in place.
“A key moment for Nairobi is community action. The studio designs the everyday systems that make circularity obvious, not aspirational.“
Rethinking single-use packaging as a shared design challenge across MSMEs, informal vendors, and municipal waste actors.
What eight years of prototyping in an informal settlement taught us about scale, trust, and the myth of the “pilot.”
Kenya has been quietly running a refill economy for years. Here’s what the packaged-goods world can learn from it.