Recycling Made Easy (RME)
Recycling Made Easy (RME) draw experience from the recycling depot currently operating centres at Nabaki Africa and from the Zero Waste Model currently being implemented by Nipe Fagio in Dar Es Salaam and Arusha using the lessons learned in both settings to increase its efficiency. This is an innovative approach to promoting sustainable waste management by providing households and businesses with an easy and convenient way to recycle their waste. We believe that recycling should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their location or income level, and that by making it easy, we can encourage more people to participate in sustainable waste management practices. Our project is designed to make recycling easy and accessible for households and businesses in the city and Tanzania at large. We believe that by simplifying the process of recycling, we can encourage more people to recycle and create a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable environment.
Tabata Kisukuru Recycling Depot
Recycling Made Easy is a project that aims to make it possible for households to dispose of their waste properly by building and managing a Waste Recycling Depot that is open to the general public and all the environmental aspects of waste management with the social aspect of waste pickers inclusion and capacitation, community education through door-to-door and collective engagements. This project that was implemented at Luhanga Street in Tabata Kisukuru is benefiting more than 1,700 households on Luhanga Street and other streets nearby.
One recycling depot was built with 10 spaces for 10 different recyclable waste materials like plastic bottles, glass bottles, scrap metals, boxes, white papers, aluminium, and other plastic waste. The depot is also built with plastic bottle walls as a way of educating the community members on how they can recycle waste for other use. Although we have posters in the depot also educating and advocating to say no to single-use plastic and use plastics that can be used more than once.
The goals achieved
We have the construction of a community-based MRF with sorting facilities for recyclables (plastic, paper, metal and glass). Collection of compostable waste, which consists of over 60% of the waste produced by low-income communities in Dar Es Salaam, and production of organic composting. We have provided education to the households surrounding the MRF alongside the engagement and capacitation of a waste pickers group to manage collection, sorting and the MRF itself.
Our Recycling Made Easy project has been successful in increasing recycling rates and creating economic opportunities for waste pickers in Tanzania. We believe that this project can be replicated in other communities, and we are committed to sharing our knowledge and experience with other organizations and individuals who are interested in promoting sustainable waste management.