Cleaning Cape Town WE ARE ONE Colour Festival

Posted on March 18, 2013 by trashbacksa

COLOURS! MUSIC! PEOPLE! All an incredible mix for an awesome party! Cape Town We ARE ONE Colour Festival was a huge success, with talented DJs and musicians performing and beautifully coordinated colour count downs! However, with all the powder comes lots of waste! To help event organisers SEED Experiences with keeping the festival clean, we ran our famous rewards for rubbish campaign whereby festival goers (TrashBackers) brought us empty powder packets in exchange for more powder!

Gosh there was a lot of powder! But, everyone wanted more and more and more…This is why TrashBack was perfectly positioned to help with this demand! The exchange rate for our campaign was set at 50 empty powder packets for one full packet. We could not keep up with the huge rush! What started as a slow trickle of colourful TrashBackers bringing in empty packets soon escalated into hundreds of powdered party animals all looking for more colour!

Eventually our volunteers were spinning with packets coming from everywhere! We were just grabbing as many packets as we could take and we were handing out powder as fast as festival goers could throw it! Unfortunately, during the event our power supply was cut and our computer died so we lost track of the exact stats. However we know that we gave out approximately 700 powder packets meaning our TrashBackers collected about 35,000 packets!! Well Done!! We are very excited by this success! We hope these type of environmental activations can demonstrate to people the value of waste and teach everyone to be more responsible with their waste!

Thank you to all our TrashBackers for participating and keeping Cape Town WE ARE ONE clean! Keep your eyes open for us at future festivals and events!

Cleaning Up the Creek

Posted on February 11, 2013 by trashbacksa

What started out as a social experiment at Rocking the Daisies last year has now become an inherent part of our activities: having fun while keeping festivals clean! After Synergy and Resonance NYE, we set up our TrashBack station at the Up The Creek Festival from 31.Jan – 3.Feb near Swellendam. We worked alongside the Greenpop team, who did an amazing job keeping the festival clean and green!

Our aim at Up the Creek was to test a concept that we’ve been playing with – being environmentally responsible can be fun! So on top of the usual rewards for rubbish campaign, we collected plastic bottles to build a recycled raft with Mitchell’s.

The floating couch was built from plastic bottles stuffed into old malt and sugar bags, which were then attached to a metal frame, designed by Lyall Sprong of ThingKing. The couch was a huge success – what better place to sit back with a beer and watch amazing local bands than floating on the breede river!

Cigarette butts still pose the biggest problem at outdoor festival, as they cannot be swept up, but this time we encouraged festival goers also to collect plastic cups and bottles as well as cans.

For each recyclable item or cup full of stompies, participants received t(rash)Bucks, which were recorded against their name. Once they had collected enough tBucks, they could choose their reward ranging from Red Bull, BOS ice tea,Mitchell’s beer to Rolling Stone t-shirts and Lilo web design’sinflatable toys. Our target was to collect 500 plastic bottles, 500 cans and 10 000 cigarette butts. The results are here:

2012 in review for TrashBack

Posted on January 2, 2013 by trashbacksa

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 12,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 20 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Cleaning the Daisies

Posted on October 10, 2012 by trashbacksa

The TrashBack team headed up to Rocking the Daisies this past weekend to test out a new concept for a participatory clean-up campaign. The concept was simple: bring us litter and we give you beer! To spice things up a bit, we added some Grand Prizes (more Black Label beer and Hemporium vouchers) for the person/team who brought in the most litter each day.

Cigarette butts, or stompies, are a huge issue at outdoor festivals as they end up all over the place, are a huge mission to pick up and are most definitely not bio-degradable! Hence these were chosen as our litter item of choice.

The initiative proved to be an extremely interesting and successful social experiment with 107 young&old, black&white, drunken&sober daisy rockers participating. Initially people were hesitant to pick up such “dirty” items, but we were delighted to soon hear reports of people receiving help from total strangers – working together to keep the party cleaner!

By the third day, we had given out 475 beers in exchange for about 39900 stompies! The duo on the left brought in 35 cups – around 2940 cigarette butts to win this case of beer… and they were stoked!

Where do we get these numbers from? Well every time someone brought in stompies, cups were filled and recorded against their name, and of course beers were exchanged to much delight! The TrashBack team then counted the average number of stompies per cup (20 samples taken) – 84 to be precise and with a total of 475 cups brought in we arrive at the magic number of 39 900!

Congratulations to the following Grand Prize winners:

Friday – Panda brought 21 cups and won herself two 6-packs of Black Label

Saturday – Andiri and ____ brought in 35 cups to take the case of Black Label

Sunday – Camilla and Blake collected an incredible 45 cups and won a R600 Hemporium voucher

Many thanks to our sponsors: South African Breweries, Hemporium, Polyoak, and of course to the seed experiences team for the biggest and best Rocking the Daisies to date!

Feedstock for jam?

Posted on August 9, 2012 by trashbacksa

So last week I visited the Agriprotien site where Biocycle venture leader, Cobus Kotze is using bioconversion to deal with waste in a rather, hmmm…. well, ingenious way.

The Biocycle team breed maggots, sorry I mean Black Soldier fly larvae, which could prove to be an extremely efficient and valuable method of dealing with food waste.

Flies are bred in these cages

Flies lay eggs in these straws

These larvae have the amazing ability to eat food waste, and they grow up to 400 times their original size within a matter of 3 weeks! Once they have finished eating and are ready to pupate, they crawl away from their food source, which for an industrial process makes it incredibly simple, as there’s no need to separate: they do all the hard work for you. I saw various prototypes for feeding trays which allow the larvae to deposit themselves neatly inside a collection bucket, while expending the least amount of energy as, when it comes to feedstock: it’s the calories that count!

Larvae are fed food waste and kept warm under lights

Once fully grown, larvae crawl out of food and drop into these buckets

The little bundles of protein sit there, fresh for the picking, and all that remains of the food is a soil enhancing compost. Processing the larvae involves drying and squeezing to extract oil (later used to make biodiesel), and then grinding the remains into a coarse powder, et voila – you have protein meal! Feedstock ideally suited to chickens and fish, that can be sold at the price of fishmeal meal, and at a much lower environmental cost. The financial value is comparable to that of soy protein however, according to Cobus, animal proteins are easier for animals to convert into muscle protein and issues surrounding growing soya are also avoided.

The team are also investigating the Musca Domestica (common house fly) for dealing with abattoir waste, but that’s a story for another time…

- AM

TrashBack goes 110% green

Posted on July 10, 2012 by trashbacksa

TrashBack was recently selected as one of thirty proud flagship projects for the Western Cape Governments 110 percent Green campaign! The 110 percent Green initiative is all about linking environmental wellbeing to economic growth, and forms part of the Western Cape Government’s plan to position the WC province as South Africa’s economic hub.

This campaign asks each flagship project to give 100% commitment, and aim for at least 10% impact that is “both green and economically beneficial”.

We are certainly honoured to receive such acknowledgement from the premier and the province and are certainly on the road to maximizing the impact of our rewards for recycling system. Thanks to the Western Cape government, 110% here we come!

Top 8 finalists in the Deutche Bank Urban Age Award!

Posted on May 16, 2012 by trashbacksa

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.

A final Binge and New Binginnings

Posted on April 18, 2012 by trashbacksa

The TrashBack UrBin Design Competition has sadly come to a colourful and creative end, but what an adventure has Bin! The build off finale held on Saturday April 14th saw our top-dog designers (in a very particular, winning kind of order) Nadia Smith, Courtney September and Etienne Britz, battle it off for the three rather grand prizes. A huge CONGRATULATIONS to all three of these passionate peeps, we know you all put in a lot of effort and we really appreciate the fact that your hard work manifested into three fantastic finished pieces, so well done! Here’s a look at the the finished products.

Nadia's clothing basket

Courtney's cupboard love

: Etienne’s re-shape

And to all our sponsors, you guys really helped to make this what it was, so a huge thanks to all the great guys and gals at Aquila, Daddy’s World, Sampleboard, Ramfest, Flamjangled, Butlers. You guys rock our recycling world! Then, thanks to our wonderful judges Marc (thingking), Danielle (liv), Jaco and Iming (Thrive), who helped us immensely to make a very difficult, multifaceted call on which bin was the bestest. And lastly but certainly not leastly, a shout out to two of our very talented mates, Kimon and Josh, who helped set and capture the mood. Finally a thanks to the creatives who helped spread the love: Margaret and Sean at CPUT Charles at AAA and Ilze at Inscape. Thanks guys!

But just because the comp is over, doesn’t mean it’s the end. These lovely clothing bins are going to be moving around our city: starting with Nadia’s clothing basket which will be at the Clothes Swap event at UCT as part of Green Week 2012. This will give you a chance to refresh your wardrobe – simply take your old clothes to earn buttons and spend the buttons on other clothes! It’s going down this Friday so check the event here and don’t miss out!

You can track all our bin locations at any time on our UrBin map:

View Larger Map

To give you some idea of what we have planned for the next little while, TrashBack will be

Launching a new, updated rewards system in Imizamo Yethu in the next few weeks,
Continuing to expand our bicycle recycling collections in Hout Bay,
And will be working on consolidating our core ideas to take over the world!

SO WATCH THIS SPACE!!!

UrBin Design Comp Top 3

Posted on April 9, 2012 by trashbacksa

After much debate and scrutiny of the awesome designs that were submitted for our UrBin design comp, the TrashBack team along with judges: Lyall and Marc (thingking), Danielle (liv), Jaco and Iming (Thrive) have decided the top 3 (in no specific order). Please vote on your favourite design (at the bottom of this post) so that we get a feel for your preference:

Courtney September: Cupboard Love

My idea for this Project was to design a bin, as the brief said that would clearly indicate that it’s a bin that would hold “clothes only”. What many of us are familiar with is our cupboard that holds our clothes for us. I therefore took the standard bin size and shaped, and then Designed it to look like it was made out of real knotty pine wood, but it would just be neatly wrapped in wooden textured vinyl similar to a cupboard or a chest of drawers. This would give the bin a wooden texture making it look like it’s made of wood. The front view of the bin then has 2 artificial doors stuck to it making it look like a real 3 dimensional cupboard. The right side of the bin then has 4 artificial drawers giving you the illusion that it is a chest of drawers on the side.

I added in a hanger, which hangs over one of the door knobs. On the hanger hangs a white cloth that says “Clothes Only”, to add more char- acter to the bin.

My choice of placement of the logos was similar to where we normally put stickers on our cupboard. It is easy to see because of the bright colours of the logos and the transparent background which makes the logos pop out even better.

Etienne Britz: Re-Shape

Like the image of a dress or a shirt, the wheelie bin is an instant recognizable shape. No matter the colour, location or scale, perceptually its shape is directly linked to its function: waste disposal. The ambitious task of changing this perception should not be attempted without proper socio-economical and ﬁnancial support. As time and budget is of great concern, let’s not change perceptions, let’s rather change the shape!

The new shape reﬂects aspect of the intended use of the new bin. Using basic, highly recognizable imagery alters the perception of the wheelie bins usage from a trash disposal vessel to a clothing storage trunk. While the T-shirt shape offers a recognizable image, it also creates opportunity of branding directly incorporated into the design. Constructed using standard plywood panels, the ﬁnal design resemble the interior of a wardrobe with different bright shirts hanging in a row. The colours provide an interesting three-dimensional quality, a playful effect on the eye as one walk or drive past the re-shaped bin.

Nadia Smith: Clothing Basket

The design I have chosen to do is to make the bin look like a laundry basket. This will clearly communicate that the bin is for clothes only, because people don’t put rubbish in their laundry baskets. The idea of showing folded clothes through the holes in the bin will indicate that the clothes are clean and that people must put clean clothes in the bin. I have decided to use colourful materials that have many patterns on them to show the fun and colourful side of clothes donation.

The way that the bin will be made is by cutting out the wholes in the bin and then rolling material into rolls and layering them on the inside. There will also be an inside liner so that the clothes don’t mix with the materials.

TrashBack Urbin Design Competition half way mark!

Posted on March 8, 2012 by trashbacksa

Less than a month remains for those creative folk among us to show off their bin fancyfication skills. If you didn’t already know, TrashBack is running a two stage ‘design and build’ competition to make our second hand clothing collection bins absolutely fool and rubbish proof! Stage 1, designers have to come up with a funky, eye catching and memorable design for a 240 litre orange wheelie bin. Stage 2, the top three designs will be entered into a build-off BINanza to compete for three grand prizes.

But that’s not all (said in the coarse, conditioned voice of an over-enthusiast infomercial presenter, who one day dreams of becoming a belly dancer… um), because there are three spot prizes along the way! But even spot prizes, like tickets to Ramfest and The Flamjangled Tea Party, cower in comparison to what’s on offer for the ‘Design and Build’ competition winners!

Three incredible Grand prizes for the build winners include:

Aquila game reserve overnight safari.
A night away for two adults in a 4-star luxury chalet, welcome drinks, 3 meals and
2 game drives… yes please!
Old Mac Daddy retreat.
A night away for two at this luxury trailer park in Elgin, surrounded by orchards, vineyards, frog-song ponds and dusty mountain-bike roads.
Sampleboard subscription.
1 year’s PRO subscription to an amazing online digital mood-board editor,
valued at over R2000!

Check out how to enter here. Competition closes Friday 30 March, build day will happen on Saturday 7 April. Now get out there, get inspired, get involved and get creative!

TrashBack

Rewards for Rubbish