When people first discover Eco Brixs, or contact us here at our HQ in Uganda, naturally their first question is to understand what we do and what our mission is. Common questions include...
"So your focus is on recycling? Or is it job creation?"
"Are you in the construction industry?"
"What's a closed-loop system?"
"How do you give trash a value!?"
To answer questions like these, we thought we'd put together a short blog explaining what we do!
And they say 'a picture is worth a thousand words', so rather than explain what we do in a series paragraphs, we thought we'd show you through a series of images in our first photoblog...
The Plastic Problem in Uganda
In Uganda, 600 tonnes of plastic is deposed of every day. With no formal waste management system in place to collect the rubbish, trash is spotted everywhere you go.
Sadly, the only current option available to the majority of the population is to burn it or send it to landfill.
Over 90% of the waste ends up this way, which presents a huge risk to the people, wildlife and the environment as a whole...
Tackling the Plastic (and Poverty) Problem: What We Do
In response to this issue, we've set up a network of Community Recycling Centres across Uganda where people can bring their plastic to be recycled...
Furthermore, to tackle the problem of high unemployment and poverty in Uganda, we pay the community for every kilogram of plastic brought to us...
To manage these centres, we focus on employing members of the disabled community...
The plastic waste is then transported from our recycling centres to the main site in our network, Eco Brixs HQ. It's here the plastic is sorted and recycled...
...into our Eco-Products. These products can take the form of bricks or pavers, and are used for local construction projects.
By selling our Eco-Products, we generate revenue which can be used to purchase more plastic from the community to be recycled, and so the cycle continues.
This is our closed-loop system in action. It means we can create items of value from waste which would have previously been discarded as worthless...
...and so, from mountains of plastic waste like these in Uganda, we can 'give trash a value'...
And we're looking to the future as well, through our Eco Clubs initiative. We're educating the next generation of change-makers on the importance of recycling!
Our Impact to Date
