The ladies who upcycle plastic waste in Nakivale Refugee Settlement to make handbags.
Furaha Butala in her workshop.
It is in Nakivale Refugee Settlement, in the southwest region of Uganda, that a group of young ladies had the brilliant idea of reducing plastic trash creatively. In 2019, they launched the "Super Nice" initiative. The latter consists of handcrafting handbags with plastic bags to invite as many people as possible to reuse their plastic waste in different designs and not throw them on the ground.
In the refugee settlement of Nakivale, everyone is comfortable with this innovation launched by these young ladies. Combating plastic waste through handcraft, therefore, becomes everyone's business. Just one year later, in February 2020, they launched a new design of handbags out of plastic bottles.
Furaha Butala, 17 years, a young resident of Nakivale is the promoter of this incredible concept. She explains having carried it out with a collective of young ladies from the settlement and with their own financial means.
Young ladies learning how to make a plastic waste upcycling handbag.
“When I joined Promise Hub in March 2019, the first place where I learned about Entrepreneurship and Leadership skills. I was excited to discover my passion but more impatient to understand how the world can benefit from my passion. As I was progressing in my entrepreneurial journey with Promise Hub, I discovered that an entrepreneur is someone who sees a need or an opportunity and takes the risk to start a business to fulfill or remedy that need or opportunity by creating something or improving upon an existing product or service.
As an entrepreneur, you create things that didn't exist, or you make a sizable change to something that already exists. And that was the answer on how to connect my passion with what the world needs. This is kind of how the idea emerged.
By following the Sustainable Development Goals, we wanted to materialize this idea: to make our planet clean -free from plastic waste. This is our way of contributing to the concerted management of the living environment.
We want this idea to be developed everywhere in refugee camps. Especially in Nakivale. Moreover, the concept has met with success with the residents. People start to give a second life to their plastic waste, they now make crafts from their plastic waste on every street corner.
We want everyone to take control of his plastic trash. This concept doesn't only clean our streets from plastic trash but it also improves the economy of our refugee settlement. ”
Satisfied clients of the plastic upcycling bags.
Several 1000 tonnes of plastic are produced each year in Uganda. Faced with the shortcoming of recycling solutions, most of the waste remains in the streets or gets burned. A catastrophic environmental situation.
In Nakivale Refugee Settlement, for example, thousands of plastic bottles end up dropped off on the road or public places: schools, football pitches, churches compounds, playgrounds, etc, and finish in gardens or the lake. Considering that life in Nakivale depends a lot on Lake Nakivale and agricultural activities.
But such great initiatives as Furaha's can help to improve people's lives on our planet and make it the better place we all dream of.