Transferring what we have learned from setting up and running Plastiki Rafiki over the past year, the club has been working towards setting up other workshops outside the school walls, with hopes of providing local employment and income and helping to clean up the environment. Diani beach, on the Kenya Coast, was chosen for this first pilot project – a partnership between Plastiki Rafiki, the Kwale Plastic Plus Collectors (KPPC) and the Nomad Marine Education Centre.
The KPPC is a social enterprise trash collection service that have bins strategically placed all over Diani. The bins allow for sorting at the disposal stage, separating collected waste into plastic, glass, metal, and paper. KPPC then further sort the plastic into different polymers, ready to be recycled into new products. At this stage, one man’s trash, really is another’s treasure!
Over the school holidays, two Plastiki Rafiki club members, volunteered their time and travelled to Diani to help set up the workshop, train KPPC on how to work the machines and conduct marketing research as well as take part in the annual Diani Beach Cleanup, an environmental festival organized by different environmental organizations based in Diani.
Setting up the workshop was an invaluable learning experience. It taught us a lot about how we will need to adapt our machines to work in other parts of Kenya and what pitfalls we will need to look out for. We will continue to work closely with the Diani workshop this year and we look forward to growing the Plastiki Rafiki Network together around Kenya and shifting our focus from production to product innovation.
