The TrashBack project has progressed steadily in the last 7 months, and has been given some great coverage on various media platforms. Some of the best coverage and one of the latest and greatest achievements to date, however, has been in relation to the Deutsche Bank Urban Age award 2012. This prestigious award saw some 254 socially minded organisations enter to compete for the grand $100 000 prize. The idea behind the competition is to celebrate and support “creative solutions to the problems and opportunities facing urban dwellers”. TrashBack entered in collaboration with Thrive (a Hout Bay based non-profit incubator) and HBR (Hout Bay Recycling Co-op), and for our combined recycling efforts and future plans were selected as one of the 8 finalists!

Here’s the Hout Bay team at the award ceremony; From left to right - Andrew Mcnaught – TrashBack co-founder, Bronwen Lankers-Byrne – Thrive co-founder, Iming Lin – Thrive co-founder, Antoney Roberts – Hout Bay Recycling Centre Site foreman, Dora Sprayari – TrashBack participant and top collector, Nokwanda Sontyantya – Hout Bay Recycling Centre Manager.

Unfortunately we were not selected as the over-all winners, but we still think we did amazingly well to make it into the top 8, especially for such a young collaborative. So a big well done to the TrashBack team, the guys n gals at Thrive, HBR and everyone else who helped. Also, a huge CONGRATULATIONS to Mothers Unite, who are doing great work in their field and walked away on top of the game, well done everyone.