Plastic Bank

Member sinde: 05/2019

Active in: WG Plastics

www.plasticbank.com

Plastic Bank

Plastic Bank is a social enterprise with the aim of preventing the littering of the oceans with plastic and at the same time giving informal waste collectors a chance to improve their standards of living. We work in the Philippines, Indonesia, Haiti and Brazil and continue to expand. Plastic Bank began in 2014 with 7 employees and a monthly collection of about 20 tons of plastic. By the end of 2019, the organization had nearly 100 employees and collected about 500 tons of plastic waste per month. Major customers include Henkel, SCJohnson, discount store Aldi and drugstore DM, as well as a number of medium-sized companies. About 10000 informal garbage collectors and their families benefit from the program, through increased income, as well as access to health insurance, education, internet and solar power. Plastic Bank also collaborates with various civil society organizations and religious communities. The organization was awarded at the UN conferences COP 21 and 23, as well as at the SDG Festival in Bonn, through the IBM-developed Blockchain App, which is used as an operating system for recording all transactions.

The plastic waste problem has taken on a global dimension, that a single organization, is not able to solve the same problem. The different factors are also of a complexity, that one approach is not sufficient to do the job. The Alliance offers a variety of different solutions from a wide range of stakeholders where we can get involved and whom we want to support. In addition, our approach is based on multiple partnerships, which can be achieved through the membership in the alliance, a potential expansion and the creation of synergies for exposed outcomes.

Plastic Bank aims to prevent the flow of plastic waste into the oceans. Thus we collect plastic, in countries with large amounts of plastic waste, which reaches the oceans. In these countries poverty is very widespread. By selling the collected plastic as a raw material for the recycling economy, we give impoverished waste collectors access to a better income. Thus, our contribution to the recycling economy is not only a reduction of plastic waste in the seas, but also an effective strategy to fight poverty.