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Totals since the 3rd of September:

Total Recyclables Collected: 18450.8kg Collected this week: +403.3kg
Rewards given out: 862 Registered Participants: 572

TrashBack is a social enterprise that changes apathy into action through an altered perception of waste. We are currently operating in the Hout Bay area in partnership with THRIVE, a local NPO.

At the core of the TrashBack initiative lies our incentivised recycling project: uphinda-phindo! which operates in the Imizamo Yethu (IY) informal settlement. Participants from IY bring in recyclable materials and are rewarded with basic items such as food and clothing.

Parallel to this runs our enrichment program which is centred around outreach and educational activities. The uphinda-phindo! participants and scholars in Hout Bay High’s enviro club are taken on outings, such as trips to Cheetah Outreach.

One of our latest additions is a 2nd hand clothing recycling program, isisa clothing, where second hand clothes are sold (at significantly reduced cost) to local community vendors and the proceeds are used to fund the uphinda-phindo! rewards.

TrashBack also operates a recycling collection service in Hout Bay using a bicycle-trailer transport system. Due to Hout Bay’s flat layout, this is more cost-effective than fuelled transport and better for the environment!

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Recent Posts

It takes two to Tango, but anyone can recycle!

Whatever your beliefs may be, the end of the Gregorian calender year is generally a pretty exciting time. Many businesses take a little holiday, plenty of things are on sale and there is usually some family or friendly festivities thrown in the mix. However, during these few weeks of fun, a large quantity of “waste” is often produced from our various antics and activities. Now of course we at TrashBack don’t like to see this as waste, but rather as opportunity, so we had an end of year idea to offer some extra-incredible incentives to collect some of these recyclable materials.
Through two generous donations, we managed to obtain a full colour TV and a flashy new DVD player, which we then offered as rewards to the weekly top collectors of our uphinda-phindo! recycling project, on the 24 December and 7th January. With prizes like these, it is no wonder why we had such a phenomenal response! What we didn’t expect, however, was that the same super-charged person would win twice!

With the help of her grandmother, Busisiwe Spayari snatched both prizes over the three week period. The grandmother and granddaughter team brought in a total of 238 kg’s of recyclables (about 26 black bags) to win the TV prize, and a whopping 370 kg’s (roughly 65 black bags) to make sure they won the DVD player as well! That’s well over half a tonne of waste diverted from landfill, with a combined volume of over 6 cubic metres of recyclable material! Well done to the two of them, truly inspiring! We hope to offer many more of these kinds of rewards in the near future, and aim to see an even greater response with as much waste recycled as possible.

On a final note, we will be adding a number of different pages to our website and kicking things up a gear in the next few months with a number of interesting projects, so watch this space!

  1. Hotbox Workshop with the Earthchild project Leave a reply
  2. Reaching out to kids with Cheetah Outreach Leave a reply
  3. Rewards day number 1… So far so good! 1 Reply
  4. Trashback uphinda-phindo! has launched 3 Replies
  5. Enviro-club visit Leave a reply
  6. Launch Day Rescheduled! New date finalised for 3rd September 2011! Leave a reply
  7. One month to launch… 1 Reply