TrashBack - Rewards for Rubbish is an incentivized recycling company based in Cape Town - CBD. The social and environmental business founded by Andrew McNaught employs over 495 people in the informal economy and recycles over 2 tonnes of waste/ week.
#Commit
For many individuals waste is simply part of their everyday life –the discarded parts of what has been used and is no longer useful. It’s not considered a commodity; in fact it’s seen as a grudge item to be dealt with by councils, over flowing landfills or vagrants digging through dustbins. Yet for many, recyclable waste is a means to an income, it creates a livelihood.
Realising that there was a need to create a form of sustainable income through recycling in low opportunity communities, was how Trashback first originated.
#Act
From its humble beginnings in Hout Bay, to a now multi-national enterprise, with collection hubs situated in Cape Town, Lusaka and Johannesburg, Trashback has succeeded in creating over 500 opportunities for the homeless, informal & low skill sectors.
Trashback has come a long way and has no intention of slowing down. This is about more than just job creation. It is about giving people a sense of worth, a spirit of hope, a future to look forward to and a chance to take back ownership of their and our communities, through life skills and technical skill development.
#Impact
For the Western Cape, in time, Trashback would like to create another 25 sites across the province which will aid in empowering 25 more entrepreneurs, servicing over 9000 waste collectors within the informal sector.
#CaseStudy
Jacques Beukes is a Trashback collector who has been with Trashback’s Buy Back Centre in Cape Town since 2014. Jacques is an extremely hard working individual and one of Trashback’s best collectors. His dream is to one day have a place he can call home, a luxury most of us take for granted. We hope that we can help him get to that goal in time to come.
Trashback also encourage the larger informal community to bring their recyclable materials like plastic, cardboard, magazines, newspapers and general paper. It’s important for the CT community to become active citizens and support initiatives such as these as they build our economy and change individual’s lives.