Paige Balcom holding a recycled Taka Tile at “Plastic Mountain,” an area at the current Takataka Plastics facility where collected bottles are dumped, then sorted before being processed in the facility’s production lines. (Photo by Ojok Eddie/Takataka Plastics)
Original article from: March 30, 2026 by Marni Ellery
Plastic waste is a growing problem across much of the world — but Paige Balcom (Ph.D.’22 ME) is working to turn it into opportunity. As co-founder and co-CEO of Takataka Plastics, a recycling social enterprise in northern Uganda, Balcom is helping to transform discarded PET plastics into durable wall tiles, providing an innovative solution to waste challenges while creating jobs for the local community.
The company, now in its sixth year, has 60 employees, half of whom are from vulnerable backgrounds, and recently received a large grant that will enable it to expand operations and establish a permanent facility. But the growth of Takataka Plastics is about more than entrepreneurial success — it reflects a philosophy shaped by Balcom’s work as a development engineer: that lasting impact emerges through collaboration with local communities.
Balcom, who was recently honored with UC Berkeley’s Mark Bingham Award for Excellence in Achievement by Young Alums, returned to campus this past December to deliver the keynote address at the Master of Development Engineering commencement, in which she shared some wisdom about leadership and humility.
“If you’re just one person trying to solve a problem, even if you’re brilliant, you’re not going to make that big of a dent,” said Balcom. “But if you have a team working together, in unity with you, and if you have learned how to lead that team effectively, you’ll make ripples of impact way beyond what you can do alone.”
The engineering team and production managers at Takataka Plastics. (Photo by Ojok Eddie/Takataka Plastics)
Before arriving at Berkeley in 2017 for graduate school, Balcom had already made trips to Uganda through Engineers Without Borders and later as a Fulbright student researcher. While working with farmers in the village of Lukodi to build an aquaponic system, she became aware of Uganda’s growing plastic waste problem. She also saw how the absence of jobs and opportunity was making it difficult for the region’s youth to recover after a 20-year civil war.
Wanting to create solutions to help communities like Lukodi, Balcom came to Berkeley to pursue her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a designated emphasis in development engineering, a new field at the time.
“It was one of the most significant programs in the U.S. in terms of this idea of applying engineering concepts to solve big, complicated systemic world problems and also applying human-centered design and looking holistically at problems, more than just the technical aspect of engineering,” she said. “That was what I was most interested in, and Berkeley was leading the way.”
According to Balcom, the mentoring she received while at Berkeley enabled her to see the possibilities as a development engineer. “[Mechanical engineering professor] Alice Agogino was one of the leading founders of Berkeley’s development engineering program and was always a huge source of support and encouragement,” she said. “As was [civil engineering professor] Ashok Gadgil. I learned a lot from him, and I gained a lot of inspiration from his research and from his work.”
For Agogino, her former student is the “embodiment” of this emerging field. “Paige is an engineer, inventor, designer, mentor and community entrepreneur,” said Agogino. “She deploys transdisciplinary skills that reflect the values and philosophy of development engineering in human-centered design, social entrepreneurship and community engagement.”
During her first semester of grad school, Balcom applied to the Big Ideas Contest, which focuses on early-stage student-led social innovation at Berkeley. In many ways, this entry became the genesis for Takataka Plastics.
“Big Ideas is so great because it helps you walk through the process of developing a sustainable business model,” said Balcom.
Balcom and her colleagues came in second place the first year they entered but won the Scaling Up category the following year. Their big idea was to “transform Uganda’s plastic waste into a resource that could be a valuable product that would create jobs for youth, as well as help protect the environment and provide clean air.”
In 2020, Balcom put her idea into action. She co-founded Takataka Plastics with Peter Okwoko, a lecturer at Gulu University in Uganda, who was already working to raise awareness about waste management and had experience working with the city’s youth.
Together, Balcom and Okwoko spent two years researching the plastic waste issue in Uganda. They discovered that the most prevalent type of plastic waste was discarded water bottles and soda bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The chemical properties of this polymer make recycling it at small scales challenging and, without an affordable collection infrastructure, many people often burn their PET plastic waste, not realizing that this releases toxins into the air.
“We really wanted to solve the PET problem but also tackle the problem of unemployment,” said Balcom. She noted that jobs are scarce and according to the 2021 Uganda National Labour Force Survey, 41% of youth (ages 18-30) are classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training), and the country’s labor under-utilization rate, which includes under-employment, stands at a staggering 42%.
Balcom and Okwoko were also interested in using Takataka Plastics to create a circular economy. She explained that many recyclers will do the first stage of processing, then export the plastic as a raw material for other countries and bigger companies to recycle. “We wanted to close the loop and produce a product locally to keep all the value of the waste within Uganda,” said Balcom.
The many different designs of Taka Tiles. (Individual photos by Cassie Acere/Takataka Plastics, photo collage by Paige Balcom/Takataka Plastics)
Balcom and Okwoko then invested six years into R&D to develop a new technology for recycling PET into a usable product that people would want: wall tiles. Not only was there market demand for their product — Uganda’s booming construction industry uses tile for everything from bathrooms and kitchens to verandas — but it could also absorb the volume of plastic waste being produced.
Today, Takataka Plastics is one of the few operations in Uganda that can recycle PET plastics into commercially viable products, while removing them as environmental hazards.
As Balcom and Okwoko wrap up a successful pilot test of a newly redesigned tile and installation process, the company’s future has never looked brighter. Thanks to a generous grant, Takataka Plastics will soon have a permanent facility on five acres of land on the outskirts of Gulu.
“We received a $1 million grant to build a full manufacturing center, training space, workshop, office and showroom,” said Balcom. “By the end of this year, we should be able to move into our new, big state-of-the-art facility. We’ll then have space to expand our production and a good space for all of our staff.”
The infusion of capital is coming at the right time as the company continues to grow. To date, Balcom said that Takataka Plastics has created 60 full-time jobs plus approximately 250 informal jobs with community collectors. Many of the full-time employees come from challenging backgrounds, having experienced homelessness, addiction, incarceration or the struggles of providing for a family as a single mother.
In addition to providing much-needed employment opportunities, the company’s recycling of PET is also paying dividends for the environment. According to Balcom, Takataka Plastics has collected 142 tonnes of plastic waste and prevented an estimated 312 tonnes of CO2 from entering the environment. In addition, an Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (E-LCA) performed last year by UC Berkeley graduate Yifei Ding (MDevEng ’25) showed that every square meter of Takataka Plastics PET tiles produced prevents approximately 28 kg CO₂-eq of greenhouse gas emissions and results in a net avoided human toxicity impact equivalent to 1,631 kg of 1,4-dichlorobenzene (1,4-DCB-eq).
Multiple warehouses are being constructed at the new Takataka Plastics facility in Koro (just outside Gulu). (Photo by Ojok Eddie/Takataka Plastics)
Balcom — who also works as a lecturer at Gulu University, where she teaches courses on entrepreneurship and waste management — sees the company as a template for building community-scale recyclers.
“The same problems with plastic waste, unemployment and the need for high-quality construction materials exist in other communities,” she said. “If we can prove that Takataka Plastics in Gulu is a sustainable business model, we hope to replicate it in cities across East Africa.”