KEPRO opens Kenya's fourth circular packaging conference on 2 October 2026, expecting more than 250 senior delegates from government, industry, recycling and investment. The theme is “Sustainable Packaging for a Resilient Future.” Producers who must pay for packaging waste meet the regulators and recyclers who must make it work.

Kenya's packaging problem is now a compliance problem. Under the Sustainable Waste Management Act, 2022, companies that put packaging on the Kenyan market must take responsibility for what happens to it after the consumer is done. Those rules tightened through 2026, and they now carry fees, monthly declarations and recovery targets. On 2 October 2026, the people who write those rules, the people who pay them and the people who make them work sit in the same room for a day.

The event is the fourth Annual Circular Packaging Conference, or KACPC IV, run by the Kenya Extended Producer Responsibility Organization, known as KEPRO. KEPRO is the industry-led producer responsibility organization that coordinates the collection, sorting and recycling of non-hazardous post-consumer packaging. Its membership passed 1,250 producers in 2025.

What is the KACPC, and why does it matter?

The conference is KEPRO's annual meeting point for the packaging value chain. It pulls producers, regulators, recyclers and investors onto one programme to work through what the law demands and what the market can actually deliver.

KEPRO says the event is expected to draw more than 250 senior delegates from government, industry, development partners, academia, the recycling sector, investment and civil society. The venue is the Hyatt Regency Nairobi in Westlands.

The gathering has become the clearest public signal of where Kenya's extended producer responsibility, or EPR, rules are heading. What is said there is read as intent. What is not said is read as a gap.

Who will be in the room on 2 October 2026?

KEPRO lists John Mwendwa, OGW, as keynote speaker. He is the Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Investment Authority, the government agency that promotes and facilitates investment in Kenya and trades publicly as Invest Kenya.

The wider programme includes participants from the Kenya Plastics Pact, the Institute of Packaging Professionals Kenya, WWF-Kenya, Climate KIC, Digital Packaging Innovations Holdings, the Centre for Environment Justice and Development, and the county governments of Taita Taveta, Nakuru, Kisumu, Uasin Gishu and Nairobi City County.

The county presence matters. Counties issue the licences and manage the waste streams that EPR is supposed to fund. A national rule that a county cannot enforce stays a paper rule.

What is the theme, and what does the programme cover?

The official theme: “Sustainable Packaging for a Resilient Future: Innovation. Accountability. Impact.”

The published schedule runs from arrival and registration through to a rapporteur's session and a vote of thanks. It is built in three blocks that mirror the theme. An Innovation block in the morning covers alternate packaging and the repurposing of packaging waste. An Impact session takes the midday slot. An Accountability block runs through the afternoon.

The sequencing is the tell. Two separate morning slots go to innovation before the day moves to impact and then accountability. Material and design questions come first. The compliance conversation comes after.

How did the conference get here?

The series is short but it is already the reference event for Kenyan packaging policy.

The third edition, on 21 October 2025, drew government officials, industry leaders, sustainability experts, academia and circular-economy stakeholders, according to trade publication Sustainable Packaging Middle East and Africa, which reported on it on 14 October 2025.

That 2025 meeting was followed by the second SPiCE Awards, KEPRO's separate recognition event for packaging innovation and sector leadership. The awards are a distinct programme from the conference, though the two are often reported together.

What do Kenya's EPR rules actually demand?

The Sustainable Waste Management Act, 2022 is the legal foundation. It made producers responsible for the packaging they put on the market and created the producer responsibility organization model that KEPRO operates under.

The mechanics are concrete. KEPRO members submit a monthly volume declaration, due by the 15th of each month, through the members' portal. That declaration drives the EPR fee each producer pays. The fee schedule is published and updated against market conditions.

Kenya's 2026 EPR regulations are now in effect. KEPRO's own messaging to members is blunt: EPR compliance is no longer optional.

Packaging is a regulatory problem before it is a design problem. A producer that designs for recyclability reduces its own compliance burden. But that decision only holds if a recycling sector exists with dependable feedstock and predictable volumes. Neither half works alone.

Frequently asked questions

When and where is the 2026 KACPC?

The fourth Annual Circular Packaging Conference runs on 2 October 2026 in Nairobi. KEPRO expects more than 250 senior delegates.

What is extended producer responsibility?

Extended producer responsibility, or EPR, makes the companies that put packaging on the market responsible for its collection and recycling after use. In Kenya it is set out in the Sustainable Waste Management Act, 2022, and is administered through producer responsibility organizations like KEPRO.

Who is speaking at the conference?

John Mwendwa, OGW, Chief Executive Officer of the Kenya Investment Authority, is the keynote speaker. The programme also includes participants from the Kenya Plastics Pact, WWF-Kenya, Climate KIC, the Institute of Packaging Professionals Kenya, the Centre for Environment Justice and Development, and five county governments.

What is the difference between the KACPC and the SPiCE Awards?

The KACPC is the conference. The SPiCE Awards are a separate recognition programme for packaging innovation and sector leadership. They are often held around the same period and reported together, but they are distinct events.

That is the argument for putting regulators and county officials on the same programme as manufacturers, recyclers, investors and civil society. The groups do not share a set of facts by default. A conference is a mechanism for manufacturing one.

Invest Kenya's chief executive in the keynote slot puts capital on the agenda early rather than leaving it to a closing panel. That placement matters at a moment when the sector is being asked to fund recovery infrastructure that individual producers will not see a return on without shared systems.

Kenya's EPR rules do the heavy lifting here. They turn a voluntary recycling ambition into a compliance obligation with a cost attached. The conference is where the people who have to pay that cost meet the people who have to make it work.

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