Women and Girls Re- and Upcycling Plastic Trash

Project Overview

The environment: Each major city in Nigeria generates thousands metric tons of trash daily, estimates show that a greater portion of this trash could have a potential reuse, but while these trash could be up-cycled/recycled into reusable/valuable items, very little is recollected from the environment. The rest of the huge uncollected trash continue to pose great environmental challenges such as air, water and land pollution, flooding and greenhouse gas emissions as a result of open wastes burning and other improper wastes disposal systems. The people: The Brookings Research Institution in the United States revealed that more than 87 million people in Nigeria are extremely low-income people, struggling to earn and live on less than $1 daily. Target group: extremely poor, vulnerable, abused or disadvantaged low income women/girls in the region. This target group are housewives, single women or widows, with limited educational background (if any), live in extended families, live "from hand to mouth". With support from GIZ, Grassroots Center Africa and the Office of the First Lady, Bauchi State, the project will train 200 low-income, vulnerable, disadvantaged or the less-privileged women and girls in the region to become “Green Ambassadors”. These Green Ambassadors will learn hands on deck how to turn their immediate plastic wastes generated in the society into very valuable and reusable simple items for reuse in the society. Our project will take them through a rigorous, practical but simple training that will teach them every self-employment skills they need to turn or up-cycle readily available trash such as plastic wastes bags into home use items they can sell to generate an additional income for their families. They will be taught how to turn plastic wastes into wall-hanging clocks, plastic wastes into woven school bags, plastic wastes into women & girls purse, plastic wastes into stools, plastic wastes into flower vase, tiles and beautiful bangles e t c Through the valuable skills they acquire at the end of the training and the network, these women are able to become self-reliant through turning trash to valuable items or materials, which they can sell or monetize in their immediate communities, earn an additional income, which will reduce their vulnerability, disadvantaged condition, ease their domestic violence, suffering from hands of their financial dependents and encourage them to become financially independent in the society whilst contributing to the positive impact on environmental sustainability and climate change.