SMI & Bank of America: EcoBrixs
Uganda’s EcoBrixs pays the local community to collect waste plastic, recycling it into useful, affordable products like fence posts and paving slabs.
Like many countries in the developing world, Uganda lacks a formal infrastructure for waste recycling. Much of the country's discarded plastic is abandoned and burned in open land, causing severe damage to the environment and people's health. In Masaka county, southern Uganda, EcoBrixs has come up with a way of dealing with this waste responsibly. EcoBrixs pays local people to collect plastic waste and then recycles it into products like fence posts and paving slabs to sell back to the local community, often at lower prices than their non-recycled competitors.
EcoBrixs is now looking to expand its closed loop system in other locations, exploring the likes of plastic credits to provide the capital to fuel their growth. Interest in Ecobrixs in Nigeria, Congo, Haiti and Pakistan demonstrates the appeal of this low-impact circular model that not only addresses the mounting crisis of plastic waste without the need for complex technology or infrastructure, but also provides much-needed work in rural areas.