178 ANNE M. KARANJA, MOSES M. IKIARA, THEO C. DAVIES
neighbouring countries. This affected the economic viability of the activities of the
people lower down the chain.
Large companies maximise or maintain the productivity of resources by using cheaper
raw material sources where legally admissible. On local outsourcing behaviour of
large car assemblers in Kenya, Masinde (1996) found that assemblies and franchise
holders did not voluntarily procure their requirements from local sources, except those
components and parts whose local sourcing was legally mandated. Even then, local
procurement of these was still lower than 100 percent. Moreover, citing lower quality
of local sources, they regularly petitioned the government about local acquisition
requirements and several exemptions were awarded. None of the components were
then acquired locally even when available.
Other than cleanliness, easy, timely and sufficient deliveries, there does not seem to
be exceptionally high standards required for waste paper as raw material input in
reprocessing. That means that the use of local sources would be relatively easy,
compared to more technologically complex, high quality raw material requirements in
other manufacturing activities.
Chandaria argues that substituting raw material sources is part of a larger strategy
aimed at dealing with the escalating costs of production and harsh economic condi-
tions, which were made worse by high levels of contamination in local waste paper.
Moreover, as the manager hastened to add during the workshop, the company had had
to make several other adjustments, including the retrenchment of a proportion (35
percent) of the permanent staff, and price increases of their products.
It is difficult for us to pinpoint the specific factor that induced this behaviour given the
prevailing mix of negative political and economic conditions. At the time of the
workshop (2000), Chandaria’s demand for local waste materials had reportedly fallen
even further due to the shortage of power and water. The search for alternatives had
increased production costs remarkably. The manager contended that price increases
were not considered tenable in the face of increasing competition from cheap imports.
Glass reprocessing
The reuse and recycling of glass waste in Nairobi begins with the household. House-
holders recover bottles and other items of glass for reuse within the house. Bottles may
be returned directly to CGI though this is not a significant channel. Returnable bottles
are normally exchanged with the purchase of drinks at retail outlets. A significant
proportion of bottles and vunjika is sold or bartered with itinerant byers who in turn
trade these to small buyers or dealers A small proportion is cleaned and sold by itin-
erant byers to individual reusers like small clinics and dispensaries. A lot of bottles