Mimi Legesse, a 32-year-old woman with a hearing impairment, began her entrepreneurial journey during her pregnancy, making bags and hats out of crochet, but her intended market failed to materialise.

After giving birth, she went back to school to complete her high school and decided to turn her skills into a business, which led to the birth of Teki Paper Bags Plc.

Teki is an Amharic word that comes from the word "Metekat," which means to replace. Teki Paper Bags was established as a social enterprise with the main aim of building a plastic-free Ethiopia while creating sustainable employment for women with hearing impairments.

Established in 2016, Teki produces up to 500 paper bags a day with Garden of Coffee, Sole Rebels, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Marriott Executive Hotel and CGCC Group among its customers.

Since its inception, the company has produced around 972,000 paper bags. When the company came to life, it had only two initial clients, which has now grown to 70, evidence that many Ethiopian businesses have joined the green bandwagon.

In general, the demand for paper in Ethiopia has seen a sharp increase with the growth of population, urbanisation, education and social and economic activities.

The annual demand for the paper reached 219,840tn two years ago, according to a survey conducted by the Chemicals & Construction Inputs Industry Development Institute.

Out of the total demand, 62pc of the paper in the country is covered by local paper manufacturers, while the rest is fulfilled by import.

In parallel with the growing demand, the amount of paper waste generated has also increased dramatically.

Out of a sample of 8,400tn of solid waste collected in Addis Abeba that was collected a decade ago, 2,035tn was contributed by paper and paper products, according to the IGNIS research project.

Some years ago, waste was collected from households, factories and organisations by individuals informally.

To formalise the waste collection system, in 2010, the City Administration organised youth in micro and small enterprises to collect the waste produced from residential areas. Private waste collectors were also made to gather the waste produced by commercial organisations.

Currently, 74 associations are involved in collecting waste through 6,400 operators and 130 medium trucks. They dump it at communal garbage containers.

Municipal district vehicles then pick up the waste from the containers and drop it off at landfills located in their respective areas.

But recently the government started a pilot project in Bole District to outsource the transportation of the waste to the final dumping site to private operators, according to Kassahun Tsegaye, the director of Addis Abeba Solid Waste Recycling & Reuse Project.

There are more than 40 private garbage collectors that transport commercial waste to landfills using their own vehicles.

Despite the effort of the government to enhance its recycling programmes, there is still a significant gap to be filled in handling landfill waste, Kassahun added.

Penda Paper Recycling is one of the companies that signed an agreement with the municipality to collect waste paper and cardboard from micro and small enterprises.

Established in 2015, Penda collected paper from 7,000 SMEs and different offices and recycles waste paper in order to provide pulp to local paper mills.

Waste paper recycling involves the process of mixing used paper with water and chemicals to break it down. This mixture is then chopped up and heated to break it down further into strands of cellulose called pulp or slurry.

The pulp then is strained through screens that remove any glue or plastic that may still be in the mixture. Finally, it is cleaned, de-inked, bleached, mixed with water and then turned into new recycled paper or different paper products.

The Global Waste Paper Recycling Market was valued at 251.7 billion dollars in 2018 and is expected to register a compound annual growth rate of 4.4pc between 2019 and 2025, according to Grand View Research.

Paper and paper products are expected to become widely used packaging materials globally, shortly surpassing plastic bags, because of their environmental friendliness, according to researchers based at Columbia University.

Over the past few years in Ethiopia, recycling has increased because of the development of different regulations that led to a large production of feedstock that is recycled into pulp, jumbo roll tissue papers and paper sheets.