June 11, 2012 / by admin / Make A Comment / Filed under Swop Shop
HERZLIA School Grade 3 visit
On Tuesday 5th June, 44 Garde 3 children from HERZLIA School came to visit Swop Shop. The Grade 3’s have been learning about recycling and the teacher Lee Lanterm organised for the children to visit us not just for the recycling aspect, but also for the community upliftment experience.
The children and parents where asked to bring a few items of clothing that they no longer wore and some basic food items. They were so generous and giving! Thank you so much to everyone of the children and parents for all the things you gave to swop shop! The children next Thursday will love all the clothes, shoes, toys, toiletries and food items! Well done.
One of the girls doing a work sheet.
The children were given an explanation of how the recycle swop shop operates, followed by a tour. They met the ladies sorting the recycling and the ladies standing in the queue. The children asked many interesting questions and were keen to find out more about swop shop. At the end we gave them an information sheet and asked them to write or draw how they thought the recycle swop shop has affected the community.
One child wrote, “By making the world a better place. By making the kids and adults recycle. By making the poor the community have food and clothes.”
Thank you HERZLIA for your visit, we have been truly enriched and blessed by your visit!
May 30, 2012 / by admin / 1 Comment / Filed under Swop Shop
A very cold and wet day!
Yesterday 33 lady’s brought their recycling to swop shop despite the rain and cold. Inspired and motivated to come to swop shop knowing that there would be hot soup & rolls to comfort the pain of the cold.
Many of the lady’s rely on the basic food items they purchase at swop shop with their tokens. It seems that as in most developing countries, women bear the brunt of hardship in poor communities. Its encouraging to see that these lady’s are entrepreneurs in their own right, collecting plastic and swapping them for essential and useful items.
Our aim is to create partnerships and spread successful Recycle Swop Shop models across the Western Cape. By partnering together we can harness energy, creativity and resources of communities that will be vital to speeding development.
Almost 3 billion – or nearly half the world’s people – survive on less than 2 dollars a day, according to the World Bank. Poverty: the desperate facts
March 20, 2012 / by admin / Make A Comment / Filed under Swop Shop
Rosa doing a survey to see the needs and wants of the ladies at Recycle Swop Shop.
Last week Rosa conducted a survey to understand the needs and wants of the ladies and gentlemen at Recycle Swop Shop. We asked them questions like… Can you think of ways that would improve the system at Recycle Swop Shop? What items do we not supply enough of? What groceries would you like to see in the shop? What other environmental projects would you like to see in Du Noon?
We are still gathering all the data, but we learned a lot about the queuing and the first come – first serve system. They asked for items like washing up liquid, Face Cream and fresh vegetables. Many asked for a community vegetable garden. We also took the opportunity to show them some of the refill bags and how by saving the original bottle, we can sell the refills for much less. We especially like “Shield” deodorant that cost R11 or 11 token and the refill that cost R6 or 6 tokens.
Over the past 3 months we have been collecting data from the amount and type of recycling that each person brings, to the items they purchase in swop shop. All the data is connected by a loyalty card number. With the help of Sarah Wittman, we will be translating the data into graphs and hope to show trends in how swop shop has effected the lives of those who visit regularly.
Here are the stats for the 13th March 2012:
| Type |
Weight |
| Plastic |
642 kg |
| Cardboard & Paper |
290 kg |
| Glass |
138 kg |
| Tin |
53 kg |
| Total |
1123 kg |
March 5, 2012 / by admin / Make A Comment / Filed under Swop Shop
Kids shopping at the recycle swop shop
An essential part of the Recycle Swop Shop is education. We are able to really get involved in educating the local children on
the importance of their environment, and on how they can play an active role in preserving it. They can learn from this unique and simple exchange of seemingly waste products to goods, like clothes, shoes, toys, toiletries and food. This system teaches them the hard work ethic and that there is always hope in even the rubbish that litters their streets.
Khanyisa bringing her recycling
Most of the children exchange their recycling for toys, but we were touched by a little girl called Khanyisa who for the past few weeks has been bringing between 5 and 10 bags a week and has been quite adamant in spending her points on clothes for herself. Here at swop shop, she can choose what she wants to wear and has been having so much fun doing it.
Louise, Jita and Patricia run the kids Recycle Swop Shop on Thursday and are loving it! They are an amazing team with so much energy and enthusiasm for these children and the welfare of them. Wow! You do an amazing job and the kids love you! Thank you!
February 27, 2012 / by admin / 2 Comments / Filed under Swop Shop
Footprints recycling centre overloaded
I was reading an article on Urban Sprout;
Cape Town Recycling in Crisis and really felt saddened that The City appears not to be able to resolve its waste and recycling problems. So I had a look around to see what some of the other big cities around the globe are doing and was pleasantly surprised. Barcelona, New york and London have a pneumatic network for garbage collection. The original article came from
The Architects Newspaper – The Art of Moving Trash –
Cities are reevaluating waste infrastructure with planning, technology, and design. Now this is exciting!
Here’s more information from the original article, about what this garbage collection system in Barcelona does:
“The city currently has three ecoparks that manage 60 percent of the waste produced by the city and provide enough energy for its own electricity needs with a plan to support some 800 nearby housing units as well. Guided tours of the plant are becoming a popular education destination.”
Pneumatic tube collection portals in London (left) and a diagram of collection points in cities like Barcelona (top).
COURTESY ENVAC
In Roosevelt Island’s Pneumatic Tubes and the Future of Cities article they ask… “What if we radically changed the way we move garbage through the city?” Check out Gregory Whitmore’s AVAC System, DVD.
Wow! What if we could have this kind of system in Cape Town?
February 21, 2012 / by admin / Make A Comment / Filed under Swop Shop
Doreen owner of Nmququ Car Wash, Du Noon
Its always great to meet an Entrepreneur! Today Doreen came to Swop Shop for the first time with 5 very full and heavy bags of Sheen Extreme cans. Doreen runs a busy little car wash just around the corner in Usasazo Street, Du Noon. She employes 6 people and mainly cleans taxis and cars. She hopes to grow her business and employ more people from the area. Doreen will be saving all her recyclables from now on and bringing them to Swop Shop. Well Done Doreen! You are doing a fantastic job!
Interesting Recycling Facts:
– Recycling tin and steel cans saves between 60-74% of the energy used to produce them from raw materials.
– 1 ton of recycled steel saves the energy equivalent of 3.6 barrels of oil, and 1.49 tons of iron ore over the production of new steel. Benefits of Recycling
Here are the stats for the 21st February 2012:
| Type |
This Week |
| Plastic |
561 kg |
| Cardboard & Paper |
223 kg |
| Glass |
114 kg |
| Tin |
63 kg |
| Total |
962 kg |
February 15, 2012 / by admin / Make A Comment / Filed under Swop Shop
Putting the emphases on plastic!
This year at the Recycle Swop Shop we have made a few adjustments on why and how we work with our recycling. We learned from last year that cardboard was A LOT of hard work and with little value on the recycling market. Also cardboard has so many uses in our townships e.g. insulation, compost and compost for earth worm bins.
So we made a decision to put an emphases on plastic. We are now giving 3 tokens for each bag of plastic and 1 token for each bag of glass, tin or cardboard. We have noted an increase in plastic, which was the desired result, and decrease in everything else. We have negotiated a better price with our recycling buy back center, but this has come with some additional refining to our sorting process!!! That process was to sort PET1 into 2 different colours and remove ALL the lids. Hard work?…Yes, well rather tedious to say the least! Note: we already sort 1 PET (polyethylene terephthalate) clear coke, cooldrink or bottled water bottles, 2 HDPE (high density polyethylene) white or coloured milk, juice or shampoo bottles, 4 LDPE (low density polyethylene) most plastic bags and 5 PP (polypropylene).
The next step is to educate and reward the people bringing the recycling to remove lids and sort by colour. Meet Spokazi! She is our volunteer that heads up the team that sort the plastic and over the past 4 months has become such a valued team member. Thank you Spokazi – you do a wonderful job!
Lovely Spokazi - she heads up the ladies sorting plastic.
Here are the stats for last week and yesterday:
| Type |
Last Week |
This Week |
| Plastic |
596 kg |
800 kg |
| Cardboard & Paper |
217 kg |
325 kg |
| Glass |
198 kg |
18 kg |
| Tin |
28 kg |
39 kg |
February 8, 2012 / by admin / 4 Comments / Filed under Swop Shop
Princess with her little girl on her back.
We have some lovely people that come to the Recycle Swop Shop, one of them is Princess. She comes regularly and brings about 25 – 30 bags of plastic and cardboard that she precariously stacks and ties onto a trolley. This week we asked her some questions…Where does she collect her recycling? How many days does it take to collect? What does she like about Swop Shop? Here are her answers…
I collect my recycling from the streets in Du Noon. It upsets me that the people just throw their empty bottles on the streets, but I can turn their rubbish into something good for me. At Swop Shop I always know that I can come home with some food to put in the pot. I like that! I collect from the taxi rank and from the shops. It takes me from Thursday to Tuesday to collect all my bags. Its hard work, but worth it. I like to buy clothes here because clothes in the shops are very expensive, but here I can find nice clothes that I swap with my tokens. Its great!
Thank you Princess for sharing your story! Well done! This project is really working for unemployed people like Princess that make it their job to collect recycling and swap it at Swop Shop every Tuesday.
February 1, 2012 / by admin / Make A Comment / Filed under Swop Shop
Community working hard
This week at Swop Shop we saw a real shift in the community of Du Noon and the ownership of this project. Our Operations Manager, Jita managed the day and all the volunteers were from the Du Noon community. Elliot and Spokazi sorted the plastic, a few ladies from the queue packed the cardboard, Jessica make sandwiches, Patiswa and Patrica worked in the swop shop and Jita handed out tokens. What a great day!
Today we had our first full loyalty cards! Well Done to the regular recyclers, they each received their 4 extra tokens and they were overjoyed!
We collected a total of 917 kg of recycling.
Cardboard & Paper = 363 kg
Plastic = 475 kg
Glass = 72 kg
Tin = 7 kg
January 25, 2012 / by admin / 1 Comment / Filed under Swop Shop
Patrick and Don't Touch (his dog)
Hooray! Recycle Swop Shop is back up and running! Yesterday we saw many of our faithful regulars back with their Loyalty cards and lots of recycling.
Patrick and his Dog “Don’t Touch” were there with 19 bags of recycling which he brings to Swop Shop loaded up in a trolley. He has difficulty walking after a car accident back in 2010. Last week Keagan, one of our volunteers, ran to help Patrick push his trolley down the steep entrance and “Don’t Touch” ran towards him barking and warning him to keep away! Keagan was fine! It was actually great to see such a good relationship between a Man and his Dog. We don’t currently stock dog food at the Recycle Swop Shop, but if you would like to donate some bags to help feed Dogs like “Don’t Touch”, please email us. Maria@beyonded.org
We collected a total of 1266 kg of recycling.
Cardboard & Paper = 466 kg
Plastic = 506 kg
Glass = 273 kg
Tin = 21 kg
