Waste plastic is not recycled in Cape Verde but either left in the environment, in streets and on beaches, or collected and burnt in garbage dumps. This is bad for the environment, but also for the health of people. Cape Green intends to start a plastic recycling program that involves the local population, especially young people.

We intend to buy a portable plastic shredding machine (see photo). It shreds and melts waste plastics like bottles, bags and more; the end product of the process is plastic wire on a spool.

We also intend to buy the complement to this shredder, the extruder, a machine (of the same size) with various moulds that melts the plastic wire and produces a variety of objects in different colours made out of the waste plastic. These can be household objects like plates, cups and buckets but also objects that are suitable for selling to tourists. Colourful bracelets, pendants, small animals and so on. We will invite young people to collect waste plastic and pay them. This is an incentive to clean the environment.

The pilot project will take place in Tarrafal, where we are based. However, these machines are suitable and indeed intended to be placed in a container which can be shipped to other places and other islands to recycle plastic. This is already being done in other locations around the world, like the heavily polluted islands of the Maldives.