Meet the Afri-Plastics Strand 3 semi-finalists

Uganda

Solution name: Waste Games

Waste Games is a project that is designed to raise people’s awareness of environmental pollution using a digitally-led gamification process for recycling to do enhanced waste sorting specifically aimed at encouraging behavioural change towards plastics reuse.

Senegal

Solution name: SOLUTIONS ECOLO-CULTUR’ELLES

SOLUTIONS ECOLO-CULTUR’ELLES has created a programme that starts with sensitisation and environmental education of children and inhabitants of a village through the involvement of local stakeholders (mainly women, “tatas” and young peer educators including girls). They use innovative, cultural tools such as educational song, choreography, short stories in animated videos, games, and artistic workshops

Zimbabwe

Solution name: Community Action on Plastic Pollution

Community Action on Plastic Pollution is a behavioural change project that primarily seeks to work with women and girls on the effects of plastic pollution on our environment. It will encourage them to take a leading role in keeping our environment clean while making an extra income from selling picked up plastic waste to recycling projects.

Kenya

Solution name: #StopPlasticPollution Campaign

The #StopPlasticPollution Campaign leverages a mobile App to promote segregation of plastic waste from source while raising awareness of responsible waste management practices. Competitions on plastic segregation with cash incentives and points that can be redeemed for medical services in partnership health clinics will be hosted on the app.

Cameroon

Solution name: Addressing Plastics in Fashion Design: A Training-Empowerment-Promotion(TEP) Model

Catharina Natang’s TEP model aims to provide training to fashion designers on sustainable fashion and resource mobilisation and equip local designers to understand the subtle but massive presence of plastic-based fabrics in the fashion industry, and how this contributes to the global plastic waste problem. Students will learn about  innovative non-plastic alternatives that are in existence and how to access them , and also how to recycle, properly dispose and select non-plastic alternatives. The project will also organise annual sustainable fashion events to widen public awareness on sustainable fashion to reduce plastic wastes that end up in oceans.

Zambia

Solution name: Organizing Plastics Engaging Neighborhoods Initiative (OPEN)

The OPEN Initiative is a women-led initiative that leverages public participation and collaboration in the sorting, collection and recycling of plastic waste in the Kabwata Constituency of Lusaka. The initiative works with young, unemployed community members to serve as plastic awareness foot soldiers, collectors and recyclers in the initiative’s entire value chain. As part of the initiative’s Say No to Plastic campaign, they want to engage informal businesses and households in the community and convince them to adopt available alternatives.

Tanzania

Solution name: Marine Litter Innovation hub (MLiH): toward reducing marine litter and empowering coastal women and girls

Marine Litter Innovation hub (MLiH) aims to become the centre for designing and implementing behavioural change ideas (gaming, nudges) that transform the community towards a circular way of life. The hub will train girls and women on making powerful messages, paintings, art and nudges and apply these to plastic separation infrastructure in an effort to reduce littering, empower women and close the existing gender gap. It will also create a platform for women to discuss their needs and the best ways toward zero littering.

Uganda

Solution name: The Uganda Recycling Association

The Plastic Manufactures and Recycling Union aims to create The Ugandan Recycling Association with membership from across the plastic recycling value chain. They want to create an interactive map where rich media and data will showcase everyone in the country engaged in recycling.

Nigeria

Solution name: Polymer Warriors

Polymer Warriors seek to harness the latent power of young, educated Nigerians to drive behavioural change about plastic waste across the larger populace by leveraging Quick Response (QR) technology by strategically building creative campaigns that use QR codes printed on posters, stickers, banners and T-shirts widely distributed around campuses in Nigeria.

Burkina Faso

Solution name: Les ambassadrices de l’environnement

Les ambassadrices de l’environnement aims to train 20 women about the harmful effects of plastic waste, through stories, tales and theatre. The women will be trained through workshops in methods for communication, awareness-raising and advocacy, based on stories, tales and theatre, and finally trained on marketing alternatives to plastic bags, especially traditional baskets, fabric and string bags and paper bags.

Nigeria

Solution name: The Green Club (TGC)

The Green Club is a school-based platform that seeks to stimulate change towards reduction of plastic pollution, and encouraging transition from single-use plastics. TGC promotes principles and practices of circular economy through collaboration with relevant MDAs and school management. Students will be educated, sensitised and stimulated to develop innovative solutions to plastic waste that can be used within their schools and homes, thereby reducing the amount of plastic that enters the ecosystem.

Nigeria

Solution name: Waste4Tech

Waste4Tech Clubs aim to empower members with training and capacity building on the need for a cleaner environment. Members are given waste collection bags to sort and collect plastics wastes into nylons, PET bottles, rubbers etc. and then sell these to recycling companies. Members are awarded tech points that they can exchange for techskills acquisition and laptops through Waste4Tech’s partnerships with tech hubs.

Senegal

Solution name: Mbalit Plastik, Nafi Yem! les Déchets Plastiques, ça suffit! (en langue wolof)

Mbalit Plastik, Nafi Yem! les Déchets Plastiques, ça suffit! aims to organise awareness workshops for community members. They want to launch an Art competition showcasing sorting bins produced from plastic waste in partnership with schools and universities together with an awareness campaign on social media. The winning bin will be selected to be reproduced by women entrepreneurs in the plastic value chain.

Kenya

Solution name: M-taka

M-taka aims to train and empower women economically to become recycling agents who build communities of recyclers by leveraging technology and inducing behavioural change through social connections and incentives. Through an app, the masses will be targeted, to increase recycling culture and link them with agents in their areas to collect the plastic and transport it to recyclers.

Cameroon

Solution name: Programme Peniang

Programme Peniang is an artificial intelligence-based reward system, which uses a smartphone camera to detect good waste management habits, such as sorting, and rewards users with points they can then exchange on the platform for purchases, grants, internet connection and other things. The user can earn points, either on the mobile app, by meeting daily challenges (missions), or by using our smart waste bins which automatically give points each time someone uses them, or else by taking part in challenges in schools, organisations, campuses or towns.

Ethiopia

Solution name: Ye Zembil Melse

The Ye Zembil Melse campaign uses creative storytelling, digital campaigning with Ethiopian artists and public figures, and public engagements, and are developing a plastic-free guide to Addis Abeba, to communicate the detrimental impact of plastic waste in Ethiopia, revive traditional alternatives to plastic, and advocate for policy to ban single-use plastic bags.

Ghana

Solution name: Community for Plastic Reduction and Recycling

The Community for Plastic Reduction and Recycling Project is a two-part project comprising community awareness through the use of activity-based education and recycling of plastic wastes. It is designed to spur community actions that bring changes in individual attitudes and purchasing habits leading to an increased awareness of plastic waste.

Nigeria

Solution name: Religious Community Recycling Advocacy

Religious Community Recycling Advocacy uses religious houses within their community to create awareness of plastic recycling and install community recycling receptacles on the premises to increase participation of worshipers and other residents.

Botswana

Solution name: Change at the Till

Change at the Till runs a 30-day challenge that aims to get users to gain knowledge on how their use of single-use plastics, especially when shopping, negatively affects the environment and contributes heavily to marine-plastic waste, and to practice what they learn. The solution is a multi-day gamified experience conducted over an intelligent WhatsApp chatbot and backend app.

South Africa

Solution name: Paycycle

Paycycle uses a Point-of-Sale (POS) based digital reward system targeted at eliminating single-use plastic bags and promoting non-plastic reusable shopping bags (RUSBs) that are also recyclable and eco-friendly. Using a fleet of mobile applications customised to shoppers of various economic classes, Paycycle tracks consumer’s shopping bag usage over partnering shops and rewards consumers with loyalty points for purchasing and reusing RUSBs.

Nigeria

Solution name: Recycle Campus

The Recycle Campus is utilising the structured school system to reach 10% of that population (15 million youths) anchoring in 3 states in Nigeria (Lagos, Abuja and Kaduna) with the aim of environment clean-up and waste segregation, and gamification through the use of social media and a competition for school teams.

Nigeria

Solution name: Let’s recycle!

The Let’s recycle! campaign will feature both online and offline awareness through creative skits, challenges, clean games events, tree planting activities, etc. in a bid to educate the people about the dangers of plastic pollution while encouraging them to stop littering and start properly sorting/segregating their plastic waste.

South Africa

Solution name: Remali 2.0

Remali 2.0 is a virtual currency and behaviour-changing mobile app focused on simplifying, encouraging and teaching citizens how to live a zero-waste lifestyle (ZWL). Remali is earned by performing ZWL activities, attending events or learning about them. Each week residents need to perform these actions to meet their target to earn Remali.

South Africa

Solution name: Captain Fanplastic

Captain Fanplastic’s use of storytelling as the core of the education about plastic enables us to contribute to the challenge directly. The programme is designed for scalability in that we are able to offer an opportunity to use girls and women as leaders, facilitators and trainers in much needed education in the communities.

Cameroon

Solution name: TED GOES GREEN

TED GOES GREEN is an awareness and edutainment project, providing information on issues related to climate change and environmental protection while encouraging a more ecological way of life without toxic waste, through various television programmes, documentaries, online content with 3D avatars, children’s programmes and books, film, music, studies and workshops that highlight innovations in sub-Saharan Africa.

Nigeria

Solution name: The PLASTIC WIZE Campaign

The PLASTIC WIZE Campaign by U-recycle Initiative Africa plans to coach 50 women across 10 universities in Nigeria to implement creative strategies to influence behaviour change towards reducing plastic waste on their campuses.

Kenya

Solution name: Ukwenza VR

Ukwenza VR uses a VR storytelling format to showcase the journey a piece of plastic takes after disposal. Through this, Ukwenza VR hopes that by showing the different ways plastic waste can end up damaging the environment, they encourage people to take better care when disposing of plastic waste.

South Africa

Solution name: Turning your trash to treasure

Turning your Trash to Treasure is based in the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve and aims to work with schools, tribal communities and women waste pickers to create awareness among selected schools by encouraging waste recycling at schools. All the collected waste material will be taken to a local company called Dziphathutshedzo Green Surface that is using plastics to make paving bricks, plastic tiles and other plastic products such as rulers and pencil cases.

Rwanda

Solution name: Garura (Take-Back)

Wastezon has built a blockchain-backed app that traces reusable plastics in circulation, increasing the customer-centric decision making towards buying the reused plastic or packaging product and providing real-time data for reverse logistics. By incorporating a take-back rewarding scheme, they incentivise consumers while also developing environmental consciousness.

Kenya

Solution name: The WAZILI Campaign (This acronym is from Walezi wa Asili in Kiswahili, meaning “Nature’s Guardians”)

The WAZILI Campaign aims to engage and educate its audiences on the long-lasting widespread negative impact of plastic waste while emphasising the socio-economic value and environmental benefits of proper plastic waste management.