Recycle Pay

As a local leader in my community, I am confronted daily with stories from families struggling to pay for their children's education or healthcare. Simultaneously, we face a significant challenge of poor garbage disposal, particularly with plastic litter. According to the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), over 600 tons of plastics are used daily in Central Uganda, with 51% of these not being collected, leading to clogged sewage systems and further harm to the environment.

Therefore, we started a RecyclePay that aims to tackle this issue by introducing new methods for collecting and processing plastic waste, making it easier for individuals and communities to contribute to a cleaner, more sustainable environment.

 RecyclePay has a digital component in the form of a physical environmental card that serves as a platform for underserved community members to collect plastics and earn redeemable points for essential services such as school fees and healthcare. The card is designed to keep track of users' points and provide a seamless and efficient way to redeem them. Customers are provided with these physical cards and use them with the help of a card reader to add or redeem points. This innovative digital component not only makes the waste collection process more efficient, but it also ensures that users' points are accurately tracked and redeemed, leading to a more effective and reliable solution to plastic waste management. In addition, the use of this digital platform also facilitates the calculation of carbon emissions, making it easier to measure the environmental impact of the solution.

The development of the digital platform is still on going.

Our project, RecyclePay, has a diverse range of beneficiaries. However, the target population comprises underprivileged school-going children who struggle to afford their education, underserved households facing significant financial challenges, local primary and secondary schools struggling to collect school fees from financially constrained parents. Furthermore, our project benefits local health centers and clinics that often struggle with parents and children who cannot afford hospital bills in the suburbs of Kampala central region.

If you are successful, the world will be better off because

-Atleast 15 tonnes of plastics would have been removed from the environment and provided access to education and healthcare to over 1,000 underprivileged children by 2025. RecyclePay would have contributed to a cleaner environment and improved  lives of vulnerable individuals.

-RecyclePay would have  promoted financial inclusion by providing affordable money-generating activities for mothers and housewives and improved financial wellbeing of underserved families. 

-We would have  created  30 jobs opportunities for kampala central residents through plastic and other waste collections.

We are a team with diverse skills in different areas. Our CEO and team lead, Maria Nakiganda, is a graduate in economics and has extensive experience in product development and finance During her tenure at Golazo Business Hub Kampala for two and a half years, she worked with several teams to launch successful eco-friendly solutions aimed at conserving the environment. She is a women councilor representing Kajjansi-Kitende Lower to Kajjansi Town Council in Wakiso District that is local government, with utmost knowledge about challenging issues within the local community.

Vincent Lubowa is our COO and an expert in marketing and sales, having helped several startups build their brand and acquire new customers. He is responsible for developing and executing our marketing campaigns to effectively reach our target audience. He is an entrepreneur with good knowledge on how to inform community members about the project benefits.

Anatoli Kirigwajjo is our CTO with a background in both software and hardware engineering. He has developed several successful products in the past and is responsible for leading our team in developing our environmental digital card machine reader and customer cards, ensuring that we deliver the best possible product to our customers.

In addition, we have two support staff members, one in the area of weighing engineering and the other in point redemption.

We have already registered 10 environmental activists. set up one collection center, over 1200 points generated from 300 KGs of plastics in the last two months. These points have seen a total of 2children remain in school as our first beneficiaries.

We believe Solve would transform RecyclePay with access to a network of experts and mentors, local hubs integration and funding. Funding to improve our digital platform, and buy plastic compactor to save space. This would accelerate our mission to collect 800 tonnes of plastic, enabling over 1,000 underprivileged children to access healthcare and education by 2025.

RecyclePay's solution has the potential to significantly reduce waste and CO2 emissions in the described unit by incentivizing underserved community members to collect and dispose of plastics properly, promoting sustainable behavior, and reducing the overall amount of waste that needs to be processed and disposed of. By incentivizing community members to collect plastics, RecyclePay can reduce the amount of plastic waste that ends up in landfills or polluting the environment, which can have a positive impact on the health of community members. Moreover, by earning redeemable points for essential services such as school fees and healthcare, community members can increase access to education and healthcare. This can have a transformative impact on the community by enabling more school-going children and improving overall health outcomes. Overall, RecyclePay's incentivization model has the potential to drive positive environmental and social outcomes by reducing waste, promoting sustainable behavior, and increasing access to education and healthcare.

-Atleast 15 tonnes of plastics would have been removed from the environment and provided access to education and healthcare to over 1,000 underprivileged children by 2025. RecyclePay would have contributed to a cleaner environment and improved  lives of vulnerable individuals.

-RecyclePay would have  promoted financial inclusion by providing affordable money-generating activities for mothers and housewives and improved financial wellbeing of underserved families. 

-We would have  created  30 jobs opportunities for Kampala central residents through plastic and other waste collections.

RecyclePay's key performance indicators (KPIs) include the volume of plastic waste collected, the number of community members engaged, the number of plastic items recycled, the reduction in waste sent to landfill, the reduction in burning of plastics, the number of children receiving financial assistance for education, the amount of funds redeemed for healthcare services, and the number of healthcare providers participating in the program.

RecyclePay builds on and connects with other existing initiatives in several ways.

- It leverages traditional waste collection methods to collect plastic waste and incentivize waste management. Additionally, RecyclePay leverages existing NFT card technology to store points that can be redeemed for essential services, which provides a seamless and transparent system for reward redemption.

-We also leverage existing modes of school fees payment by employing its new method of cashing to schools as well as health centers. This ensures that beneficiaries can access essential services without changing their payment plan.

-We collaborate with existing waste management companies in the logistics space as well as with the government, since it's their mandate to ensure proper waste management. This collaboration allows for more effective waste collection and management while creating opportunities for underserved communities to earn points that can be redeemed for essential services.

We target the use of NFT software to load points on to the cards of the participants and use of an app to ease monitoring by the owners.

At RecyclePay, we are committed to promoting gender diversity and creating an inclusive workplace culture. We are proud to have a diverse workforce, including a woman CEO and one female staff member, as well as three male staff members.

To further promote the participation of women in our business, we have implemented policies and practices that support diversity and inclusion. Our recruitment and promotion processes are designed to be fair and unbiased, and we actively seek out qualified female candidates for open positions. In addition, we offer flexible work arrangements to help women balance work and family responsibilities, and provide mentorship and training programs to help women develop the skills and knowledge they need to advance in their careers.

We believe that diversity and inclusion are essential to our success as a business, and we are committed to creating a workplace culture that values and respects everyone regardless of gender. By promoting the participation of women in our business and providing opportunities for them to succeed, we are building a stronger and more successful company.