Let us introduce ourselves, we are Sophie, Jamil and Emma. We aim to make a social and sustainable impact during our minor ‘International Entrepreneurship and Development’. Together with CHAKO Zanzibar, we want to tackle the local waste and health problems on the island Zanzibar. We do this with a budget friendly, innovative and sustainable alternative for recycling plastic waste.
CHAKO Zanzibar is a social and sustainable enterprise located in Zanzibar, an island at the coast of Tanzania. Zanzibar is known for its beautiful white beaches, clear turquoise blue waters and rich history. More than 100.000 tourists visit Zanzibar annually. Unfortunately, tourism causes vast amounts of plastic waste on the island. This litter is poorly managed and large amounts end up in the ocean, which has drastic consequences for the environment and ecosystem of Zanzibar. This is where CHAKO comes into play. They up-cycle the waste into beautiful locally produced, artisan crafted products and sell this across the globe. Not only does this create something beautiful out of the waste, but it also keeps the beautiful island clean. Moreover it empowers women and youth with knowledge, a trait and fair wages, which is also very important, given that half of the population of Zanzibar lives below the poverty line.
Besides the waste problem on Zanzibar, the island faces a new growing issue: overweight issues and obesity. Considering the standard is little to no daily exercise for women, more and more women suffer from overweight or obesity. In order to tackle these problems, we have come up with a solution! We develop and build a bicycle-powered machine that can shred plastic waste into usable material for CHAKO’s products. We call this the ‘bike-shredder’. This is an innovative and sustainable alternative for currently existing methods and it perfectly combines up-cycling plastic litter and the vitality of the employees.
At the end of our minor CHAKO will use the bike-shredder to combine exercise and labour. This provides numerous advantages for the island: no emission of greenhouse gases, independence of the unreliable power grid, healthier employees and above all, the possibility to shred the plastic waste on the island to create new products. When the pilot bike-shredder is a success, CHAKO will easily be able to build more bike-shredders from our design.
