Nairobi, Kenya
Saturday, August 30, 2025

Leaning on a crutch, 85-year-old Molly Aluoch struggles to walk from her small room with mud walls. On her back is a bag of used plastic that she can exchange for a shower or toilet.
In the 31 years she has lived in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum, access to water and sanitation remains rare and expensive for her and most of the residents.
Small informal groups that control access to the precious liquid often charge unaffordable prices.
The NGO Human Needs Project (HNP) has been working for the past decade to alleviate this precarious situation.
Residents can exchange the plastic they have collected for “green points.” These credits then allow them to use toilets, showers, laundry services, or obtain meals.
“With my green points, I can now access comfortable and clean toilets and bathrooms at any time of the day,” says Molly Aluoch happily.
The octogenarian used to spend 10 shillings (7 euro cents) every time she needed to use the toilet or take a shower.

This is a significant amount compared to the 200 to 400 shillings (US$1.3 to US$2.6) that many Kibera residents earn each day, which must also cover housing, food, clothing, and their children’s education.
“It meant that without money, I couldn’t use the toilet,” recalls the elderly woman, who now uses the money she saves to feed her three grandchildren.
Molly Aluoch, a traditional birth attendant, is part of a group of about 100 women who collect plastic in exchange for “green points.”
She takes them to an HNP center, located about 200 meters from her home. One kilo of plastic earns her 15 green points, equivalent to 15 shillings.
Since 2015, the project has distributed more than 50 million liters of water and enabled more than a million uses of toilets and showers.
– “Several days without water” –
This is a big step forward for its beneficiaries, as water is a precious resource in Kibera: it is common for vendors to create artificial shortages to increase prices, ruining impecunious residents.
While Nairobi’s water service charges between €0.5 and €0.7 per cubic meter for connected households, Kibera residents have to pay up to $17 for the same amount in the worst cases.
“We could go several days without water,” sighs Magret John, 50, a mother of three whose life has greatly improved.

“The water point is right outside my door. The supply is constant and the water is clean. All I have to do is collect plastic, earn points, exchange them, and get water,” she says.
The project particularly benefits women and girls by guaranteeing them “adequate sanitation services” during their periods, says John, who has lived in Kibera for nine years.
With 10 water points spread across the slum, HNP says it protects residents from the excessive prices charged by informal vendors while tackling the growing problem of waste in Kibera.
“When people cannot access decent toilets and bathrooms, the environment suffers,” observes HNP’s director of strategic partnerships, Peter Muthaura.
In the first quarter of 2025, Kibera residents collected two tons of recyclable plastic, HNP reports.
For Molly Aluoch, every bag of plastic and every green point earned goes beyond just access to water.
“My prayer is that this project will spread to every corner of Kibera,” she says, so that it “reaches thousands of women whose dignity has been stolen by the lack of sanitation services.”

Humaniterre with AFP