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Before we dive into rePurpose Global’s impact generation process, let’s look at the vehicle for infrastructure and systems development: the impact project.
Each plastic recovery ‘impact project’ is located in a region that’s vulnerable to plastic pollution and leakage into nature. You can read more about how projects qualify to be chosen in the following articles. But the basis is that there’s a plastic pollution problem, and rePurpose Global brings capabilities and finance to build or fix the value chain for a certain plastic type.
What this means is that each impact project is unique. A project is a region-based partnership between rePurpose Global, a local waste management solution provider, local government, and other stakeholders. Sometimes projects incentive collection, sometimes it’s additional sorting or transportation, sometimes it’s infrastructure development… and often projects fix multiple aspects of broken waste value chains to ensure plastic recovery from nature and delivery to the best environmental ‘end-destination’.
There were 14 rePurpose Global impact projects active in 2023, across 6 countries in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Combined, the projects have recovered over 27 million kilograms of nature-bound plastic (as of April 2024).
For example, rePurpose Global project Anmol Kinara was established to recover and process low-value, multi-layered plastic waste in Udupi, India - an area where these plastic types frequently wash out into the ocean. The lack of market value for soft, multi-layer plastics means that these plastics would otherwise be either dumped into nature or openly burnt, leading to environmental contamination and marine plastic pollution.Anmol Kinara is a collaboration between rePurpose Global and Mangala Resource Management (a young and innovative start-up running the ‘Zero Waste Village Program’). It runs as a public-private partnership model with local village councils. Plastic is collected from 47 villages in Udupi and neighboring districts, and transported to the Material Recovery Facility for processing. Through Anmol Kinara, we aim to bring plastic waste management services to all 300+ villages in the Udupi region over the next 5 years.
Through these kinds of projects and partnerships – and the hard work of the rePurpose Global Impact Projects team (who work on the running, training, monitoring, and verification processes in projects) we have developed a unique understanding of community challenges and circumstances around plastic waste around the world.
As you’ll go on to read, we have built on this knowledge and experience to produce protocols and processes to run projects and lead the development of an ethical and environmentally positive industry.Impact projects go far beyond plastic recovery and data collection and are our platform to create new income streams for waste workers, and empower marginalized waste worker communities.
