Thank You for Your Support

Thank You for Your Support

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  Apwoyo Thank You Your SUPPORTmeans so much to us! SAVE THE PLANET RECYCLE PLASTIC info@takatakaplastics.com www.takatakaplastics.com Call: 0393252992
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  Thanks to yourhelp, Takataka Plastics has been growing so fast! “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about” - MARGARET J. WHEATLEY TRANSFORMING WASTE . EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES HIGHLIGHTS A FEW HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PREVIOUS MONTHS
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES We now have 30 full-time staff! Each employee supports on average 5 dependents. We purchased a second-hand pickup truck to help us in collecting plastic waste and delivering prod- ucts. We also use the truck for our education and outreach campaigns in the community.
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES We’re building a machine shop and larger pro- duction space at our office. The machine shop will allow us to build and maintain our production equipment onsite and will save us a lot of money and time instead of relying on outside shops. We’re also training youth in welding and fabrication skills. The larger production space will accommodate bigger and more production equipment.
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES We completed a consulting project in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Western Uganda with CARE Uganda and Lendager Group in Denmark. We installed small-scale recycling machines in the settlement, trained a group of the refugees in how to operate the machines, helped perform a needs assessment in the settlement, and developed a process to locally make roof tiles from plastic waste that the refugees can use for shelter in place of the tarps they’re issued. The roof tiles we designed were showcased at Milano Design Week. We’re iterating and improving on our locally designed and built small-scale injection molding machine. We’ve started selling our machines to organizations in Uganda who want to locally recycle their own plastic waste. https://www.careuganda.org/ https://lendager.com/
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES We recently launched a new product: Mask inserts. These plastic frames sit comfortably behind your mask and give you space to breath and talk. They make a real difference when you have to talk for an extended period of time. Huge thanks to TURBOCAM for machining a precision, polished mold pro-bono so we can make these mask inserts! We’re continuing to receive orders for face shields—we recently delivered 4,000 to BidiBidi Refugee Settlement, 5,000 to Kiryandongo Refu- gee Settlement, and 2,500 to Lira City. We can’t keep up with the orders for wall tiles, so we’re working on expanding production. https://www.turbocam.com/
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES Thanks to a partnership with renowned UC Berkeley professor Ashok Gadgil, two of our student interns have been producing Safi Safe nonalcoholic disinfectant using an electrolysis process developed in Dr. Gadgil’s lab. We’ve been selling Safi Safe to businesses around Gulu and will offer it to schools once they’re allowed to open in Uganda. Another team of student interns is working on recycling soap collected from hotels around Gulu to support members of the community who cannot afford to purchase soap for handwashing.
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES We’re expanding our collection of plastic waste in Gulu. We received special permission to access Gulu’s landfill and sort and collect plastic bottles from there. We’ve also installed large collection bins at the Main Market, Bus Park, and other busy places around town. We’ve recruited and trained community members who stay near the bins to take responsibility for filling the bins with bottles and training other people in the benefits of recycling. During the brief couple of months when schools were open be- tween COVID waves, we installed collection bins and conducted outreach programs in 9 primary schools teaching students about the dangers of burning plastic, how to recycle using the 4R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Rethink), and set up collection competitions between the schools.
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  Koc Pap Pap Humorousvideo teaching people how to recycle their bottles with Takataka. Produced by Luo Comedy- Group. Almost 10,000 views in the first month! Mask Inserts Humorous video showcasing our mask inserts. Produced by Luo Comedy Group. Over 6,000 views in just three weeks! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D49X0RQCzD0 TRANSFORMING WASTE . EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES Let the Sky Breath Music video produced by Ama Rilli (an Italian Anthro- pology graduate student who conducted her re- search with us for several months.) Featuring Dickens (Gulu artist) and Blair (Our longest-employed pro- duction team member. He formerly lived on the street but has now turned his life around working at Takata- ka. He loves to pursue music as his side hustle and is an up-and-coming Gulu artist). To help educate the community, we partnered with musicians and a popular local comedy group to produce outreach videos. Check out the videos to get a taste of what our office and the streets of Gulu look like! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deEq_zmYvNs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFQs6qvMsjM
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES We continue our ongoing partnerships with Gulu City Council, GIZ (the German equivalent of USAID), and other local organizations. We were invited to be the Private Sector Lead to help the partnership figure out how to recycle PET plastic in Northern Uganda. We’ve already outgrown the office we’re renting! We purchased ~2 acres of land for our permanent home on the outskirts of town, and we’re working on plans with an architect to design and build our own customized office and production space. We’re excited to create a model recycling, engi- neering, and training facility in Northern Uganda. It will take a while to finalize the plans, get all of the approvals, and install our own transformer, but we hope to be able to shift to our permanent home late next year.
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES Finally, and most heartwarmingly, we were able to reunite one of our production team members who used to live on the street with his family. After being falsely accused of stealing a phone and beaten, this boy ran away from home and walked for days to reach Gulu. After realizing the difficulties of street life, Okello [not his real name] sought help and we offered him a job at Takataka Plastics. He worked hard and was able to provide for himself and save a fair amount of money through our savings group at Takataka Plastics. When Okello’s father eventually realized he had wrongly accused the boy and that Okello had grown up to provide well for himself, the father invited him back home. Okello’s mom was so excited to see him after all this tim she ran out of her hut and threw herself onto him in a huge hug! I’ve never seen such a heartwarming welcome home. Using his savings, Okello was able to help his mother and grandmother and is setting up his own small business raising goats and pigs. When schools reopen in Uganda, he wants to return to school and finish his primary education.
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  TRANSFORMING WASTE .EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES Stories like Okello’s are our favorite. Because helping change lives is why we started Takataka Plastics. Preventing plastic waste from being burned and clogging drains is great, but the motivation that keeps us going when things are hard is seeing the impact that Takataka Plastics has on all of our staffs’ lives and in the community. Thank you for partnering with us on this journey. As always, you can follow what we’re up to on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and our website. We have lots more projects in the works, so stay tuned! With gratitude, Paige Co-founder C.T.O C.O.O Peter Co-founder https://twitter.com/TakatakaPlastic https://www.takatakaplastics.com/ https://www.instagram.com/takataka_plastics/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/okwoko-peter/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/paigebalcom/ https://www.facebook.com/takatakaplastics