As the rubbish built up on the rubble of Mogadishu’s wrecked streets, Ahmed Abdullah saw a business opportunity. 



He recruited a team of workers &#8211; many of them refugees from Somalia’s long conflict &#8211; and sent them out to collect plastic bags, bottles and wrappers to turn into roof tiles and other recycled goods.



“They cannot break, you see,” Abdullah said has he threw some of his tiles onto the floor to show their strength. “They are made of the recycled plastics and soil.”



Years of fierce fighting in the coastal city have destroyed its infrastructure and left the surviving buildings pocked with bullet holes.



The cash-strapped government is struggling to control a vast, divided country where Islamist militants from the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group still launch regular attacks on the capital.



Regular rubbish collection is way down the state’s list of priorities.



“A lot of rubbish like plastics, paper bags &#8230; are thrown outside the city,” said Abdullah. When the piles get too big, he added, people start dumping it in the ocean.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="999" height="666" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-38741" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950.jpg 999w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RC1A64D76950-768x512.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 999px) 100vw, 999px" /><figcaption> Employees fill bags with shredded plastic litter to be made into roofing tiles at the Envirogreen recycling plant in Mogadishu, Somalia January 13, 2019. Picture taken January 13, 2019. REUTERS/Feisal Omar </figcaption></figure>



So, in June 2018, he and others founded their company, Green Plastic.



Muslimo Aden Ali said he gets paid 3,000 Somali shillings ($5.18) for every kg of waste he brings in.



“We carry the rubbish on our heads and backs. It is a nice job. We survive on this,” he said.



Maryan Abdullahi, a 35-year-old mother displaced by fighting, said she walks more than 10 km (7 miles) a day searching for plastic.



“I cannot sleep at night because of back ache but this is the only way I can raise food for my children.”



-Abdi Sheikh

RC1301B35D90

Somalis Turn a Profit by Transforming Their Scrap Plastic

Makafui Awuku has slept on a bench, hunted in the bush, worked at a church and sifted through mountains of plastic waste. He is the man turning trash into cash in Ghana.

Thirtyfive-year-old Makafui Awuku has been through enough pain and penury in life to see beauty in the little things. He is the man who can turn plastic scrap to nifty objects of desire.
His is a life filled with odd, interesting assignments.
It is easy to see why Awuku is not particularly fond of his early years. The social entrepreneur and founder of Mckingtorch Creatives did not have a privileged life.
Born in Keta, Sogakope, in the Volta Region of Ghana, his father, who was a driver, passed away when he was aged 12 leaving Awuku, his sister and mother to fend for themselves. Surviving on his mother’s income as a nurse was not enough for Makafui to achieve his dream of becoming a doctor. Instead, he had to depend on his wits for survival.
He would hunt with a catapult in the bush and even started his own poultry farm to generate extra income. Then in 2005, life became grimmer.
His mother passed away from a stroke and Awuku found himself stranded with no help.
Armed with just $1,000 from his mother’s pension contribution, he moved to Ghana’s capital city, Accra, in search of greener pastures.

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<blockquote>&#8220;There was a lot of waste generated during board meetings,&#8221;</blockquote>
That same year, he got admission to study marketing at the Institute of Professional Services but the money he made was not enough to pay tuition fees.
“I have struggled most of my way through life. I have slept on a bench in Accra and I have also slept at a 24-hour internet café. I didn’t have anywhere to sleep, so I decided to just spend the night behind the computer there. While in school, I had to find part-time work to pay my fees and pay my medical bills as I had asthma,” says Awuku.
He would do assignments for his colleagues and charge them for it, and also pick up odd jobs such as being a part-time soccer teacher for an international school in Accra. But he eventually had to drop out of school because he couldn’t afford it.
“I eventually met one of my mentors and supporters, Reverend Richard C. Whitcomb, a senior overseer of the Agape House New Testament Church in East Legon. He gave me a job at the church, then he helped pay my rent and then when I had to go back after I deferred my final year, he helped pay my tuition fees too.”
Awuku published his first book in 2015, The Tertiary Years, to address inefficiencies in the education system in Ghana and help young students build leadership skills.
That was followed by his social project called Student Initiative Ghana, a platform for the personal development and training of young people.
“I have visited over 15 schools and trained over 80,000 people over the last 15 years in the areas of brain-training and memory enhancement and helped young people with learning difficulties.”
He subsequently gained admission to the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) program created by former American President Barack Obama in his early years at the White House to develop the leadership of young people in Africa creating value in their communities.
“I spent five weeks in Nigeria at the Administrative Staff College in Badagry. I returned to Ghana to do an internship program. I worked with the One Ghana Movement and one of the programs they were doing was on sanitation. The team was going to be buying 1,000 bins and installing it in various places in Accra in partnership with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly,” says Awuku.
This is when he found his Eureka moment.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2018/04/18/roll-used-tyres/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: On A Roll With Used Tyres</a>
“While I was doing the internship, I realized there was a lot of waste generated during board meetings. I decided I wanted to do something about this. I looked through the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and I looked at the plastic waste problem. I said to myself, ‘I took a course on waste management at university and I am a fan of clean environment, so let me do something with sustainable communities and cities which the plastic waste falls under’,” avers Awuku.
A 2002 report by the African Development Bank said that Ghana generated about 3.6 million tonnes of solid waste per year made up predominantly of food, plastic and wood. Awuku decided to join the fight to clean up Accra’s streets. He started Mckingtorch Creatives in January 2018 to turn plastic waste into art.
“So I started collecting bottles from the office and decided to try designing a Christmas tree from plastic waste. I got a welder to install a frame for me that looked like a frame for a tree and I decided to buy ropes. I would drill holes under the bottles and on top of the bottles and pass the ropes through them and install them on the tree. A day before Christmas, I had finished the tree. I bought lights and put them up and there were actually 396 plastic bottles on that tree,” says Awuku.
He installed his new creation in a major street in Madina, a suburb in Accra.
“I realized that it was changing people’s attitudes, they were shocked that plastic waste and bottles could be used in this manner. So I decided that I could take things a lot further and look at modeling some solutions I could develop using plastic waste,” says Awuku.
Some of his creations include flower pots, bins, wall-hangings and even sandals.
He also teamed up with one of the biggest manufacturers of bottled water in Ghana to create a fence with over 10,000 bottles for World Environment Day.
Awuku is determined to tell the youth that there can be workable solutions for waste and that they can be a pertinent part of building a planet free of plastic.

IMG_3564

Ghana’s Wastepreneur

<h3>Thato Kgatlhanye, 23</h3>
<h3>CEO, Rethaka</h3>
One day, when you wake up to a rubbish bin that tells you when it&#8217;s full and needs to be emptied, it will probably have been designed by Thato Kgatlhanye, CEO of Rethaka. This is her wish. Her company already produces recycled schoolbags that double as solar-powered lights children can use to study in the evening.
From Mogwase, a small town 40 minutes outside Rustenburg in the North West province, she’s in the process of creating a business empire out of waste.
She founded Rethaka at the age of 18. It now employs 20 people, with nine volunteers, and supplies its products to the likes of Standard Bank, Red Bull, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Unilever. The company exports to Namibia, Turkey, the UK and Brazil. The aim is to expand to 24 African countries.
“Our company is set up to be a leader in Africa, in the transition towards a circular economy, where we look at waste as a resource and use it to remanufacture products. At Rethaka, we say we’re resourcing Africa’s future,” says Kgatlhanye.
Her mother is a nurse who managed clinics in their district. Her father is a taxi owner and driver.
“The quiet tension between their careers built something in me way before I knew who Thato would be,” she says.
“Yes, I am an entrepreneur like my father, but I also have a social conscience and that can be attributed to my mother. I’m not just in business for profit; I’m in business to do good.”
Kgatlhanye’s parents had to deal with her independent mind at a very young age when she chose all the schools she attended from grade four onwards.
After graduating from the Vega School of Brand Leadership, Kgatlhanye was offered an internship in New York with marketing guru Seth Godin.
“This changed my life. It gave me a perspective of what was possible. I think being in a city like New York, you start thinking of yourself being capable of doing anything. All you have to do is make a decision on what is it you’d like to do, and kill it,” she says.
Kgatlhanye is killing it. She has won several awards, from the Samsung Student Excellence Award in 2014, third place in the SAB Foundation Social Innovation Award, to finalist of the Cartier Women’s Initiative Award in 2015.
With this bright young mind, anything is possible. Get ready to listen to your rubbish bin.
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Milenials_Jay-Caboz-10

CEO, Rethaka

When most of us think about rubbish, we imagine dirt and all kinds of nasty diseases. But for South African businesswoman Lilly-Girl
Dukada-Hentcho, waste is a treasure.
She has been in the waste management business in the country for nearly three years, and is now looking at expanding not only across South Africa, but also elsewhere on the continent.
“The environment is my passion and waste is gold. Success is not only about money; it’s also about changing the mindset of people about waste and recycling,” she explains.
Dukada-Hentcho is part of a group of women entrepreneurs who are stepping up to the plate in the waste management sector. It is an industry that is growing rapidly in South Africa and other parts of the world, as people become more enlightened about conserving the environment , and consumerism continues to spread.
“As we know, the whole world is encouraging Africa to take a big step in saving the environment. The old waste collection mandates have changed now from just collecting waste and dumping.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5730" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Oct-036-038-CA-SA-women-002_1-223x300.jpg" alt="" width="223" height="300" />
Dukada-Hentcho, along with her husband, Philippe, formed DNH Recycling and Waste Management Services in Midrand in Gauteng three years ago. The company focuses on separating waste at source.
Although she had had some experience in running a waste management company in the United Kingdom, when she started her venture  in South Africa, Dukada-Hentcho says the sector was virtually a no-woman’s land.
To add to her woes, recycling did not happen on a large scale in the country, with many considering it a trendy suburbia practice.
“It was like entering the lion’s den. We had to offer free pilot [projects] for them to see what they were buying,” she says.
But since then, the picture has changed. Dukada-Hentcho credits her strong belief system and willingness to take risks for the success of her company, which also does waste analysis for clients, including Famous Brands, at
38 sites.
In its first year, DNH brought in $100,000. The following year that had increased to more than $240,000. This year, she plans to double her revenue again. The company is looking at ventures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria, and is also in meetings with the University of Johannesburg with a view to collaborating on a waste energy project.
Dukada-Hentcho is just one example of a number of South Africans cottoning on to the fact that waste has value.
In May, Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic hub, held its first waste management summit, and Mayor Parks Tau challenged delegates to view rubbish in a different light. On average, South Africans each produce about one kilogram of waste a day, and if Johannesburg does not start diverting waste on a much bigger scale, none of the current landfill space will be around in 10 years’ time.
According to a baseline study conducted by the government, the country generated 108 million tons of waste in 2011. Ninety-eight million was disposed of in landfills, and only 10% was recycled through various forms, such as separation at source, composting and buy-back centres.
The latest statistics, from 2009, estimate South Africa’s waste sector to be worth $1 billion. Government, which has earmarked the green economy – waste in particular – as a priority area to build the economy, believes the sector can grow from its current 0.56% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), to 1-2% of GDP. In Europe, the eco-industry is showing growth rates of 7-8% per annum.
The concept of a green economy is emerging much faster in South Africa compared to the rest of the continent. In fact, it is one of the most important elements in the country’s new growth plan; the creation of a lower-carbon economy is being punted as a major source of jobs.
South Africa’s Industrial Development Corporation, a development finance institution, has earmarked $2.5 billion over five years to 2015/16 for the development of green industries. In partnership with German development bank, KfW, the IDC has also allocated $50 million to a Green Energy Efficiency Fund. It is aimed at stimulating investments by local entrepreneurs. One of the projects already in progress generates biogas from abattoir waste. Funding options for waste management and recycling technologies are also being developed.
“Innovation is considered crucial in growing and sustaining the waste industry. We need new and better ways of doing things,” Henry Roman, from the national Science and Technology Department, told delegates at the waste summit.
Traditionally the sector, which the United Nations Environment Program values at $437 billion a year worldwide, has been epitomized by a large participation of women at the bottom end. There are about 15 million waste pickers in developing countries and they largely consist of women and children.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5728" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Oct-036-038-CA-SA-women-005-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" />
However, in South Africa, the face of the sector is changing, and women are increasingly becoming key players. They include the president of the Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa, Suzan Oelofse; the CEO of PET Plastic Recycling Company (Petco), Cheri Scholtz; the operations director of the Paper Recycling Association of South Africa, Ursula Henneberry; and EnviroServ group property and marketing director Delia Lavarinhas.
Oelofse says researchers in the waste sector at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and at universities are mostly women.
“Women care more. We realize more what the impact is of bad management, and also we care more about the aesthetics of waste,” she explains.
At household level, Oelofse believes there will be an increased focus on recycling and waste separation across the country as South Africans become more aware about preserving the environment.  Also, she says there are a number of growth areas in the waste management sector that women can tap into.
These include extracting usable resour-ces from industrial waste, separating waste at source and waste-to-energy projects, such as developing landfill sites for the harvesting of methane gas as an alternative energy source.
There are also opportunities for women in the post-consumer recycling of water and soft drinks bottles that contain polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
Under Scholtz’s stewardship, PET recycling has almost doubled in tonnage over four years. Close to $19.3 million was paid for sorted, baled bottles delivered to recyclers, and approximately $42 million was injected into the local economy through the sale of recycled PET for downstream products.
“There is still much work to do to capture the remaining percentage of bottles that were not collected, and with the post-consumer PET recycling targets set to rise to 58% in 2017, with a growing market size, increasing the volume of bottles collected for recycling is thought to be the best method of achieving this,” explains Scholtz.
“There is a need for more visible, accessible infrastructure in the form of drop-off facilities, buy-back centres and materials-recovery facilities. This is enabled by increased investment in the recycling sector, making it a bankable sector.”
Also, Scholtz says there is a need for constant innovation in the field of design, to ensure that the bottles produced are actually recyclable, and that labeling is improved so that consumers are encouraged to recycle them and they do not end up in landfills.
Another growing area of opportunity is South Africa’s development of a sustainable tires recycling industry. According to the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa, a waste management fee on new tires is expected to generate around $70 million per year. Eighty percent of it will be ploughed directly into developing the industry.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5726" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Oct-036-038-CA-SA-women-003_1-300x198.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="198" />
While the outlook for the sector is bullish, women still face an uphill battle if they want to make their mark.
Aliena Ratenazi, an entrepreneur who has been researching the waste management industry for four years, and who is getting into the business herself, says that women are often the worker bees who compete at the lower-level structures.
“The barrier of entry in the waste sector comes with a heavy price tag for women… Today, a lot of women contribute to the household and need to make their businesses a success, which within this sector is not an easy task,” says Ratenazi.
“South Africa as a country is not giving the support in the field of educating, funding and training women to enter the waste sector, as we have no role models in this sector&#8230; [It] can be a huge green industry that can focus on major transformation with the optimization of women in waste, where the benefits are considerable and tangible. [This], in turn, would mean huge growth for South Africa, as there is an abundance of waste available in our landfills,” she says.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5727" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2013-Oct-036-038-CA-SA-women-004_1-300x191.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="191" />
As South Africa shifts focus to industrializing the country in a sustainable way, the managing of waste will become more of a priority. The time is ripe for women to investigate the different technologies out there, which will have a seismic impact on how the industry operates, and ultimately, how much money can be made

Tag: Recycling

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Somalis Turn a Profit by Transforming Their Scrap Plastic

Ghana’s Wastepreneur

CEO, Rethaka

TURNING RUBBISH INTO GOLD