Our partners at the Kenya Defence Forces presented HyaPak’s biodegradable
applications to King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands
during their state visit to Kenya.
The KDF runs one of the largest reforestation operations in the country under
the Jaza Miti programme — billions of seedlings to be planted over a decade.
Each one of those seedlings, traditionally, is wrapped in a single-use plastic
bag that has to be removed at planting and ends up in the soil regardless.
HyaPak’s seedling wrappers replace those bags with a hyacinth-based one that
gets planted with the seedling and releases nutrients as it breaks down.
What the demo covered
- The full lake-to-shelf flow — from harvesting on Lake Naivasha to a finished wrapper.
- Side-by-side: plastic vs. biodegradable, with a freshly potted seedling in each.
- A handful of other formats: courier packaging, carton lining, plates.
For a country that has historically led on global circular-economy policy, the
Netherlands delegation’s interest was a small but meaningful nod. We’re following
up on a couple of concrete pilots that emerged from the conversation.
