Lorna Rutto
Kenyan eco-entrepreneur Lorna Rutto turned a childhood revulsion for Nairobi’s plastic-strewn streets into EcoPost, a trail-blazing venture that upcycles trash into cash and climate wins. Since founding the company in 2009, she has diverted more than 13 million kilograms of waste from landfills, extruding it into durable fencing posts and construction boards that have spared roughly 4,500 acres of forest and prevented an estimated 160 million kilograms of CO₂ emissions. The model is as social as it is circular: EcoPost employs over 300 people on its factory floor and anchors an informal supply chain of some 12,000 women and youth who earn steady income collecting plastics in marginalized communities.
Rutto’s results have earned global notice—the Cartier Women’s Initiative crowned her Sub-Saharan Africa laureate in 2011, Forbes listed her among Africa’s “20 Youngest Power Women” the next year, and Kenya’s national Green Award followed in 2014, yet she measures success by each kilometer of fenceline that replaces a felled tree. With demand rising from farmers, real-estate developers and municipal planners, she is expanding production capacity, eyeing new product lines such as recycled decking, and scouting joint ventures that could replicate EcoPost’s model across East Africa. Her mission remains clear: turn plastic pollution into prosperity while keeping forests standing.