Plastic Bank

Sustainable and ethical collection infrastructure for plastics – A model for inclusion within circular economies

Plastic Bank’s Social Plastic are high grade recycled plastic (rPET, rPP, rHDPE, rLDPE) that generates positive environmental impact and promotes inclusivity through economic and social impact. Social Plastic empowers the lives of those who collect it by increasing collector income by up to 30%. The collection is also incentivised with life-improving benefits such as micro-insurance, tools of the trade, or goods.

Plastic Bank creates sustainable and ethical value chains of recycled plastic in disadvantaged communities that look for ways to engage the whole community— from businesses, institutions, schools, and households – to reveal the value of plastic and stop it before it leaks into the environment and pollutes the oceans and ecosystems.

Each actor plays a critical and unique role in ensuring the implementation of a circular economy model within their countries:

• Households: have the responsibility to segregate their waste for more efficient recycling and waste management processes
• Waste collectors: play a vital role in the overall plastic waste management system and help steer efforts in mitigating plastic leakage
• Institutions: have the role of educating and mobilising their respective communities to practice circular actions, and increase awareness around plastic pollution
• Junkshops and aggregators: play a critical role in the value chain by converting plastic into economic benefits for the individual waste collectors
• Processors: support junkshop businesses by purchasing their plastics and waste and re-processing them into raw Social Plastic pellets, ready to be re-circulated into the economy.
• Clients: purchase Social Plastic and further empowers the economic incentivisation of low-income, informal waste collectors.