9. rePurpose Global's impact projects

The impact engine that makes VPR happen behind the scenes is rePurpose Global’s Impact Projects team.

The team runs 13 unique, proprietary projects (as of April 2023) in Colombia, Cameroon, Kenya, India and Indonesia. Each project has a different set of local circumstances, different plastic waste challenges, and different local governments and regulations to work with.

For example, project Sada Shakti (see video above) was created to tackle the rising challenge of mismanaged waste in Bengaluru, India. With a rapidly populating city, local government capacity is strained, and people find uninhabited land - including the city’s many lakes - to dump their household waste.Sada Shakti was formed with Saahas Zero Waste and Town Municipal Councils to solve this problem. The project supports existing municipal collections and local dry waste collection centers operated by micro-entrepreneurs to ensure waste material streams are sustainably and ethically managed. The plastic targeted for impact is multi-layered plastics and other low value plastics.

Project Laut Yang Tenang was developed to fight plastic pollution in Indonesia – one of the world’s largest contributors to ocean plastic. Working with existing networks of informal waste workers, the project has improved door-to-door collection services, and enhanced local waste-banks to enable collection and recycling of low-value, flexible LDPE and HDPE plastics. The project incentivizes the collection and ethical recycling of these plastic types, which are otherwise ignored by local waste collectors due to low market value. Recycled plastics are made into transportation pallets, bringing the plastic back into use.

There is much more to running projects than plastic recovery. Some projects bring improved waste management services to people, some protect habitats, some protect ocean coastlines, and some bring infrastructure and systems to islands.

All projects empower waste workers and communities, and have protocols around the creation of social impact. Plus the mix of technological solutions, system implementation, training, and auditing that’s required to ensure transparent, verifiable, impact data is being generated.