#GEW Winner Aweko
Reforming Africa’s Waste Systems
Growing up, my entire life revolved around the rain. Living in a slum community in Kampala meant that when it rained all of my classes were cancelled and I would have to miss school, something that saddened me deeply. Even worse, during particularly unforgiving seasons of rain, entire homes in our neighbourhood would flood. I remember days when it would rain so heavily that my family and I would have to spend the entire night draining water out of our home.
These harsh conditions were one of the consequences of having poor garbage and plastic waste disposal systems in the area. Poor management of waste meant clogged drainage channels which, of course, exacerbated the recurring flooding. Reflecting on the hardships of my past, I decided to use my experience and knowledge to make a positive change in my community.
I established Reform Africa, a community-based innovation that aims at promoting a sustainable lifestyle by designing and transforming plastic waste into environmentally and socially responsible products that supports the local communities in Uganda.
We aim at moving away from collection and dumping and moving towards a more sustainable way of dealing with plastic waste.
Just as the great part of the world is, Uganda is struggling with high rates of plastic waste, solutions of the past like dumpsites aren’t working anymore due to the rise in population around the world and even higher consumption rates.
I learned of the Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) and Youth Equality Centre (YEC) entrepreneurial training program through a forwarded link from a friend on Facebook and never looked back. I was supported in developing Reform Africa completely, though it’s beginning conceptual phase, in testing, and in building a business model. I was encouraged to think differently and to truly and critically look at the current plastic waste management challenges in my community. This led me to realize that there truly is value in turning one person’s trash into another’s ‘treasure’.
The items produced by Reform Africa from collected waste include shopping bags, school bags, dustbins, flower pots, rulers, and reusable water bottles, to name a few, all made from recycled plastic waste. Now that we’ve successfully established ourselves as a producer of recycled goods, we have shifted our primary focus to a new goal: moving to have recycled shopping bags used in community spaces and markets to raise awareness of the importance of recycling and the consequences of single use plastic bags.
Participating in the DOT program was life-changing in that I came to realize that it is not only my home community that is faced with high levels of plastic waste pollution but the whole world. We are grappling to find ways in which to manage waste consciously.
I established Reform Africa on my own as a team of one, but we’ve since grown to include a much larger team, and have plans to expand and sell our products all over the world. Every week, we gather with a group of volunteers and drive from home to home in Kampala and collect plastic waste to recycle to make dustbins.
Through the DOT and YEC program, I learned to better understand customer needs through the Human Centred Design curriculum and we are now ready to tackle bigger markets on a much larger scale.
Learn more about Reform Africa at https://web.facebook.com/reformug/
