Waste Business Hub

Waste Business Hub is a startup incubator of The Greens that is training young and underprivileged youths for FREE on the business opportunities available in the domain of waste in order to alleviate poverty and curb youth unemployment, improve agriculture and biodiversity conservation, improve health and wellbeing, reduce inequalities, combat climate change and promote sustainable cities and communities.

The principal goal of the hub is to train and empower young people to start new businesses from waste, hence nurture a generation of Wastepreneurs (Waste Business Entrepreneurs) who will make profits from the transformation of waste to wealth while helping other people and the planet.

The hub currently operates 3 innovative programs that are actively educating and engaging young people in the transformation of three kinds of waste; textile, automobile tires and plastics.

The Textile Recycling program (ecoDesigns)

ecoDesigns is a textile recycling and fashion designing hub of The Greens’ Waste Business Hub that is training women and girls for FREE in Textile Recycling and Fashion Designing in a bid to reduce female unemployment, inequalities and poverty, promote female entrepreneurship, combat textile waste pollution and climate change as well as improve the health and wellbeing of orphans, prisoners, underprivileged and poor people via the donation of free clothes and shoes the hub is collecting from the city.

ecoDesigns was created after our 2017 research that involved over 400 Tailors/Fashion designersin the city of Bamenda, North West Region, Cameroon, were we realized that;

1. They are more than 800 Tailors and Fashion designers in the city, with each tailor generating an average of 2 – 5kg of textile waste per week and more during festive periods. We realized from this research that the tailoring/fashion industry in Bamenda generates about 1600kg to 4000kg of textile waste every week.

2. More than 75% of the tailors/fashion designers burn or throw their textile waste in the landfill and that many of them were unaware of the environmental impact of the textile waste and the textile industry as a whole.

On the other hand, in an oral interview with more than 100 persons from diverse households in the city, we realized that more than 80% of the people burn or throw their old/unwanted or damaged clothes and that not up to 5% of them knew the environmental impact of the textile industry as a whole.

Its against these research backdrops that ecoDesigns was created. The hub currently has 03 Training Directors and 13 women and girls who are learning textile recycling and fashion designing for free. The two years old hub has graduated two ecoFashion Designers, collected and upcycled over 12,000 pounds of textile waste into reusable pads, pillows, chalkboard erasers, garments, dolls, mattresses, Laptop bags, scarecrows, etc.

The hub has also collected over 2000 dresses from the city of Bamenda and redistributed to over 300 persons who are internally displaced, orphans, underprivileged, etc.

The Plastic Bottles Recycling Program

The Plastic Bottles Recycling program is educating and engaging young people in schools and communities for free in plastic bottles upcycling. The principal goal of the program is to stop plastic bottles pollution and through the program, we have discovered two new innovations; UPB Vertical Garden and UPB Tree Nursery Pots (UPB = Upcycled Plastic Bottles) and started one major project; the Plastic Bottles Recycling and Arboriculture Project.

The Plastic Bottle Recycling and Arboriculture Project strives to upcycle 500,000 Plastic Bottles into One Million UPB Tree Nursery Pots to nurse and grow one million trees (fruit trees, agroforestry trees, medicinal trees, ornamental trees) which will be planted in the Bamenda Highlands of the North West Region of Cameroon in order to promote food and fruit security, alleviate poverty and youth unemployment, STOP Plastic Bottles Pollution and fight climate change.

The project has already removed over 20,000 plastic bottles from the environment and transformed them into UPB Vertical Gardens and UPB Tree Nursery Pots. Three UPB Tree Nurseries and Two UPB Vertical Gardens have been created from the project. Over 100 young people have been given onsite training in plastic bottles upcycling meanwhile over 1,000,000 people have been sensitized about Plastic Bottles Pollution and upcycling via our DIY videos of plastic bottles upcycling and the seven77 Challenge.

In August 2019, the program put a Trees price on plastic bottles and for every 10 plastic bottles donated to the program, we give the donor one tree of his/her choice.

The Tire Recycling Program

Our tire recycling program has discovered two new innovations; Mushroom Tire Seats and Tire Erosion Embankments. These innovations are greatly contributing in stopping tire pollution in the city of Bamenda, in the North West Region of Cameroon.

The Mushroom Tire Seats are very low costs durable seats that are made with tires, soil and cement, and can be painted with educative messages in schools and communities meanwhile the Tire Erosion Embankment is a very cheap and durable erosion embankment built with tires and soil.

The tire recycling program has trained over 2000 young people in over 8 schools in tire upcycling to produce Tire Flower Pots, Tire Nursery Beds, Tire Flower Gardens, Mushroom Tire Seats and Tire Erosion Embankments. So far, the program has upcycled over 5000 Tires which were initially destined to be burnt or for the landfills and these have given used tires more value and created opportunities for young people to earn a living from the upcycling of tires.

Waste Business Hub is a project designed and coordinated by Ngalim Franklin, Founder/Executive Director of The Greens and the different innovations of the project offer young people new opportunities to start businesses in the transformation of trash to treasure.

What we Need

We are currently in dire need of funds to;

1. Pay 2020 rents for @ecodesigns.

Due to the current crisis in the English speaking regions of Cameroon (https://reliefweb.int/report/cameroon/cameroon-escalation-anglophone-crisis-short-note-21-january-2020), business has become very difficult making it very difficult for us to be able to pay rents for our textile recycling and fashion designing hub that is training women and girls for free. We risk closing our hub, if we fail to fundraise for the rents. As such, we are in dire need of finances to pay our rents for the year 2020.

Our rents for 1 month is $70 and for the entire year is $870. We will really appreciate if you can support us to pay our rents for this year.

2. To buy a Sanili Moto Tricycle

For the past two years, Ngalim Franklin, Founder/Executive Director of The Greens has used his mini pajero for the collection and transportation of the different kinds of wastes to the hub.

With the increase in volume of the waste to be collected for repurposing, we need another automobile for collection and transportation of waste from the source to our processing sites. As such, we will appreciate if we can raise funds to purchase a Sanili Moto Tricycle which is cheaper to fuel and very big to carry enough waste. The sanili Moto Tricycle costs $1500.

3. To build seed collection boxes and produce more plastic bottles upcycling equipment.

We are also in dire need of funds to build seed collection boxes, which we will install in different locations of the city for the collection of seeds of pears, mangoes, plums, oranges, etc as well as funds to purchase more plastic bottle cutters, perforators etc.

With $500 we can produce these items and speed up the plastic bottles upcycling and arboriculture project.

Thanks for supporting us.

Waste Business Hub educates young people in the recycling of waste