Turning Kenya’s Water Hyacinth Crisis into an Eco-Friendly Opportunity

It all began with a stuck boat.

Four years ago, Joseph Nguthiru and his classmates spent five hours trapped in a dense mat of water hyacinth in Kenya’s Lake Naivasha. The experience inspired the 26-year-old environmental engineer to create a startup that converts the world's most problematic aquatic weed into biodegradable seedling wrappers and alternatives to single-use plastic bags.

Nestled in Kenya’s Rift Valley, Lake Naivasha is a biodiversity gem, but it’s choking under a green invasion. Water hyacinth, an aggressive plant native to South America, now carpets a quarter of the lake’s surface, suffocating aquatic life, blocking boats, and threatening the livelihoods of thousands of fishing families.

Water hyacinths result in losses of up to $350 million annually across Kenya’s lakes, including Naivasha and Lake Victoria, in fishing, transport, and tourism, according to a 2023 research review published in the East African Journal of Environment and Natural Resources. “This weed doubles in mass almost every week,” said Henry Koech, Naivasha’s fisheries officer. “Without intervention, it could cover half the lake in five years.”

Nguthiru decided to take the matter into his own hands. “What struck me was that no one was doing anything about it,” he said. He changed his senior project to study water hyacinth. After experimenting with crushed hyacinth in campus labs — where early prototypes were clunky but promising — he hit on an idea: Transform the hyacinth into biodegradable products to tackle both plastic pollution and invasive plant overgrowth.

Since then, his startup HyaPak has eliminated over 700 kilograms of water hyacinth from lake Naivasha, which originally covered an area of 1,480 hectares. 

HyaPak’s model is both practical and community-driven. Local fishermen harvest the hyacinth, dry it onshore, and send it to nearby Egerton University for processing. The plant is crushed, milled, mixed with binders, and fed into biodigesters to create a biodegradable material. In 2024, the startup began distributing their final products — biodegradable seedling bags — to institutions for real-world testing. These included the Kenya Forest Research Institute, Kenya’s military, One Acre Fund, DHL, Plant Village and private farmers.

For locals like Simon Macharia, chair of the Central Beach Boat Rides group, HyaPak is a solution to a crisis that hits home. “Fishermen lose their nets under the hyacinth and are forced to buy new ones on credit,” he said. “The lost nets keep killing fish, and we burn extra fuel just to cut through the weed.” More than 2,500 people depend on Naivasha’s fishing economy, from boat owners to fish traders. But as fish stocks decline and operating costs rise, many are pushed to the edge.

HyaPak’s arrangement therefore benefits both sides. Fishermen like Macharia get paid 1,500 Kenyan shillings (about US$11) per 100-kilogram bag of dried hyacinth while clearing the waterways they depend on. “When it’s fresh, four boats carry the hyacinth. When dry, it fits into a 50-kilogram bag,” Macharia explained. The dried hyacinth is easier and cheaper to transport, allowing HyaPak to scale operations.

The environmental benefits are also notable. “The water hyacinth thrives because our lakes are rich in phosphorus and nitrogen, which come from runoff during rainy periods. As a result, it not only offsets 1.6 kilograms of carbon dioxide from plastic wrappers of each seedlings, but also accelerates forestation by reinjecting the hyacinths’ nutrients into the soil,” Nguthiru said.

HyaPak’s innovation has drawn global attention. The three-year-old startup was selected as one of 10 worldwide innovations advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and it won the $20,000 Prototypes for Humanity prize at the COP28 global climate talks. Nguthiru has met presidents, appeared on CNN and The BBC, and signed an agreement with One Tree Planted to expand impact. An NGO affiliated with Obama Foundation also valued HyaPak at US$3 million based on the patent, Nguthiru noted.

But beyond the awards, it’s the local impact that matters. “We’re creating jobs, improving lake health, and offering a plastic alternative,” Nguthiru said. “And we’re showing that innovation can come from where the problem is.”

HyaPak has also inspired institutional support. Egerton University, which provided initial lab space and 800,000 Kenyan shillings (US$6,200) in seed funding, now holds a nearly 30 percent equity stake in the company. It sees the project as both a research innovation and a teaching tool.

“We are currently in discussions to explore the possibility of creating packaging for the food industry, potentially incorporating other fibers alongside hyacinth,” said Nancy Matheri, head of the department of civil and environmental engineering at Egerton University.

Despite its promise, HyaPak faces hurdles. Scaling up to meet demand — which runs into the millions of units — requires substantial investment. While several investors have approached the startup, Nguthiru turned many away due to unfavorable terms. “We’re not chasing money; we’re building long-term relationships,” he said.

There are also ecological trade-offs. While hyacinth harms fisheries, it also provides shelter for fish, food for hippos, and reduces illegal night fishing by blocking access to shorelines, said Koech of the Lake Naivasha fisheries office.

“The challenge is managing, not eliminating, the hyacinth,” added Silas Wanjala of the Lake Naivasha Riparian Association.

Past removal efforts offer cautionary lessons. Biological controls like introducing weevils largely failed, while mechanical harvesting raised concerns about disrupting fish breeding grounds, Wanjala said. Other projects — such as converting hyacinth into animal feed, compost or charcoal briquettes — struggled because of the plant’s high water content and low biomass yield.

Even the current community-led harvesting faces limits. “The amount we remove compared to the growth rate is so small that it barely makes a dent,” said Macharia, noting that the incentive of being paid for the hyacinths they catch isn’t always enough to get fishermen wading back into the lake to get the flower.

HyaPak’s approach offers a powerful insight: Solutions to environmental challenges are most resilient when they combine community participation, scientific innovation and economic incentives. By paying local harvesters and creating a marketable product, HyaPak built a rare win-win model.

Founder Joseph Nguthiru’s ambitions are now global. He is eyeing expansion to countries like Nigeria, El Salvador, Mexico and Uganda, where water hyacinth also chokes waterways. With a patent in hand and partnerships underway, he hopes to replicate the model beyond Kenya.

For universities and entrepreneurs, HyaPak also offers a roadmap: Harness local crises as innovation labs, and include communities not just as beneficiaries, but also as co-creators. “We ask students to think outside the box,” said Matheri, who mentored Nguthiru. “This is about addressing real societal problems, not just getting a grade.”

As Kenya’s lakes continue to grapple with invasive species and climate stress, solutions like HyaPak offer a glimpse of what’s possible — even if they won’t fully erase the problem. As Wanjala put it: “You cannot completely eliminate hyacinth. You can only manage it.”

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.