Empowered Solutions for Environmental Sustainability (ESES) had an amazing 2025, in many ways. Our team was welcomed to Kenya, expanding our work into a new country. While in Nairobi- the Kenyan capital- we met many hardworking, dedicated people who want to help remove plastic from the environment. Read about our trip to Nairobi here: https://eses-plastic.org/blog/eses-travels-to-nairobi-kenya/
We had an amazing week in Nairobi, and, later, wildly successfully fuel oil runs.
Additionally, we continued our amazing work with our partners in Zimbabwe: ENACTUS-NUST and ALITAB. Furthermore, our engineers have developed a new prototype for the Poly processor- continue reading to learn more- and our social media presence has increased dramatically!
Although 2025 has ended, our work continues. Here is what ESES is planning for this upcoming year.
Field Work
ESES thrives in overseas work- in fact, that’s almost all we do! So far, our travel has taken us all over Sub-Saharan Africa: Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Kenya all have Polyfuel processors!
In 2026, ESES plans on continuing our work in Africa. Our team will travel to a new location, Nanyuki, Kenya, this summer to connect with the community and deploy a Polyfuel processor.
Additionally, we will likely return to Harare and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, to reconnect with our partners there. It’s also certain that our team will check back in with our partners at Treeside Special School in Nairobi.
Technical Work
An engineer’s work is never done. If you’ve been following our social media, you’ll know that our lab is developing a new prototype for our processor. This new prototype, once successfully up and running, will allow the user to continuously refill plastic into the machine. This will allow for more plastic to be converted into fuel oil.
The engineers are continuing development of the prototype so that by the time the summer research trips come around, the processor will be ready for deployment.
Social Work
This year was a big year for ESES on the social side. Our social scientist, Natalya Sarkari, has dramatically increased our online engagement on Instagram and Tiktok over one hundredfold.
On Instagram, our posts got over 16,000 views! We gained 10 new followers and saw a dramatic increase in engagement. ESES’ Tiktok saw increased growth as well. Our videos were viewed over 19,800 times, and our profile was viewed almost 300 times by new, unique users. To top it all off, our most popular video accumulated over 3,000 unique views, and we earned 12 new followers on Tiktok.
The majority of these analytics came from May-December 2025; Ms. Sarkari began in May, at the start of the research trips, and continued posting for the rest of 2025. Our website has also seen increased engagement, with a 37% increase in views on our blog posts, up over 700 views from 2024!
We anticipate steady growth across all platforms throughout 2026, with higher numbers driven by full-year analytics tracking.