Plastic bottles - a source of life for someone

I jumped off the taxi (the local mini bus) in "the middle of nowhere" on the way to work in the morning the other day. Why? Because I saw a man sitting on the side of the street with 3 big bags full of plastic bottles besides him...

These bags of empty plastic bottles made me jump of the taxi.

My project partner Reco has a small factory to produce plastic bottles, and the project also involves looking into how they can use more plastic packaging for their products. They are now using imported glass containers, both expensive to buy (and getting more and more expensive as the Ugandan shilling is loosing value), not very environmentally friendly when you have to transport it from South Africa to and delivery times are long.

My first thought was: oh no! plastic is bad. There can't be any recycling options in Uganda. Plastic waste must be floating everywhere. But, actually, it isn't. You hardly see any plastic bottle waste on the streets even though the use of them is extensive (my self for example, I use more than 10 in a week, for my drinking water). Searching around I have not found any organized refund system with collection point in the supermarket, like we are used to from Europe. Where do the bottles go? Asking around, nobody seemed to know either.

Well, thats why I jumped off the taxi: I needed to know the story of the bottles in the big bags, - and the story of the man besides them.

Mr. Vorld Obadda, lives on the street in Kampala, and makes a living out of empty plastic bottles.

Mr. Vorld Obadda is a young man who is born in Kampala and grew up living with his mother. He is lightly disabled: he limps. Still he has gone to school, he can read and write and speaks good english. When his mother died he continued to live in the house. One day, some people came and said they had a machine that could "copy" his money and make him rich. He went with them, they robbed him and took everything he owned. Since then he has been living on the streets. Actually, he had just taken his morning "shower" when I surprised him there on the side of the road. 

Mr. Obadda, my guide and teacher for the day.

So, what about the bottles? Well, Mr. Obadda has spent the whole yesterday afternoon, evening and night walking up and down the streets to collect them from the ground and from trash cans around the city. Now, he is soon going to deliver them and collect his daily source of income, his source of life. I asked him kindly if I could follow him and see where the bottles go. He was surprised of this interest for his "work", but he took me along.

A view of the river in Kisenyi.

A lot of garbage floating in Kisenyi, but no bottles.

He took me to an area of town called "Kisenyi". Not many foreigners (or muzungus - as they call white people like me) comes here. It is near to being a slum, or maybe it is a slum. I am not quite sure of the definition. There were children playing and running around even though it was time for school. Many kids here don't go to school, some of them don't have a home. They are street kids struggling to make a living, in the same way as my guide and "teacher" for the day, Mr. Obadda. 

A street boy sitting in the garbage, looking for things to use, sell or play with.

So, he took me to the "recycling plant", which turns out to be a station for washing and reselling the bottles for re-use. He delivers the bottles there, and gets 100 Uganda Shillings (about 0,04 USD) for 7 bottles. The recycling plant sells the "clean" bottles to street vendors: 3 bottles for 100 Uganda Shillings. Street vendors fills them with "juice" or other drinks and then sells them to customers on the street. 

The "recycling plant".

Bottles are washed with soap, and made "ready" for re-use.

Is it environmentally friendly? Yes. But, is it safe and healthy? No. There must be other options for recycling. It still needs more research. 

Some bottles are re-used, but what happens to the broken bottles?

I also asked Mr. Obadda about broken bottles that can not be taken to the "recycling plant" and be re-used. He says they are also collected, mostly by the street children. A truck comes and collects them. Mr. Obadda doesn't pick the broken bottles, he says the payment is too low, it is not worth it. The truck that comes belongs to a big Ugandan plastic company who pay 200 Uganda Shillings per kilogram (about 0,08 USD). Imagine how many kilos you would have to collect in a day to make a living! 

I a day, Mr. Obadda makes about 5000-6000 Uganda shillings (about 2 USD) from his bottles. Just enough to give him the food he needs, - and the energy to go on picking bottles day after day.