The End of Ocean and Beach waste?
Lanka Upcycles make real impact in Sri Lanka
To expand the plastic waste collection in Asia in 2021, Empower partnered with Lanka Upcycles (Rice & Carry), based in Sri Lanka’s east coast. Lanka Upcycles is fighting the plastic waste problem increased by tourism while providing wages for the local waste collectors and producing recycled, sustainable products.
Founded in 2012, Lanka Upcycles is a social enterprise which specializes in recycling and manufacturing products from waste materials, according to Fair Trade principles. Since May 2019, Lanka Upcycles has been a fully approved member of the World Fair Trade Organisation (WFTO). Inspiringly, they also have broadened the business from their brand Rice & Carry, making handbags from upcycled rice bags and spice sacks, into brands of Click Clack handloom fabrics, and Waste Less Arugam Bay, a local recycling and environmental education centre.
“Our mission is to offer local solutions to the global waste crisis, create steady jobs for women from rural areas, and promote Fair Trade principles locally and globally. I started Lanka Upcycles with my wife Susanne Berg in 2012”, explains Hendrik Konzok, founder of Lanka Upcycles.
Most households in Sri Lanka burn their plastic waste in their backyards. During the tourist season approximately 5,000 tourists add a huge amount of especially PET water bottles to the waste problem. If every tourist drinks 2 bottles it means dealing with a minimum of 10,000 bottles per day — many of them found on the beaches! This peak makes the already extremely patchy waste collection from the municipality even less effective for the population which results in more burned plastics.
In addition to waste generated through tourism, Sri Lanka is facing a large problem with ocean pollution in general. “Every year we see very polluted beaches during the monsoon when rivers take all the plastic waste out to sea. But we do not only find Sri Lankan plastic but also waste from various countries around the Bay of Bengal”, Hendrik tells Empower. He continues: “We have very good high end recycling factories in Sri Lanka so the PET can be turned into yarn for the textile industry. But we also believe that mitigation and alternatives play a major role so we provide accessible and safe drinking water with our public filtration system to replace single use plastic bottles. The ultimate goal should be to create as little waste as possible that we need to recycle.”
One challenge for Lanka Upcycles is the extremely low price of virgin plastic with which they have to compete. It is very difficult to break even just by bulk collection of plastic waste. “Improvement could come through better legislation and higher value through various mechanisms”, Hendrik thinks.
Since Lanka Upcycles started collaboration with Empower, they have been able to do beach clean ups more regularly and create jobs for locals. By selling the collected plastic through Empower, Lanka Upcycles can finally collect waste that was not possible to be collected before. Also the cash flow has got better. Before they had to accumulate recyclable waste for months to have enough to transport to the recycling facility which is on the other side of the island. That meant months without any income but expenses instead.
Hendrik is happy about the recent development in business. “Since we started working with Empower the dynamics of our waste collection operation have changed drastically! Now, we can not only continue our efforts thanks to Empower but we can also pay more to independent collectors. Normally in Sri Lanka there are very few independent collectors since the low value makes it a very tedious business. We buy plastic from Anifa Haroon, a local waste collector, who picks waste at a stretch of beach twice a day. Thanks to Empower we are now able to pay him double for the PET he collects. Especially for low income work, doubling the pay makes a big difference,” he says gladly.
Read more about
Lanka Upcycles www.lankaupcycles.com
their waste collection activities www.wastelessabay.com
and their Rice and Carry Fair Trade bags www.riceandcarry.com
Thank you Lanka Upcycles!
Written by Varpu Vasko, Empower
