The Team at the start line.

What a day! At 7am we dropped off our Team of 7 guys (Riaan, Brett, Omri, John, Mark, Thinus and Willie), which made up 1xTeam of 4, 1xTeam of 2 and 1 solo rider. The chilly April morning didn’t damper their high spirits and there was much good-natured banter between the guys. The weather forecast looked good and they had high expectations for the full days ride ahead! Then they were off! Bottles filled with all sorts of Isotonic drinks that promised to ‘recharge their batteries’ and pockets stuffed with an assortment of snacks filled with energy boosting properties. And boy, did they need it!

This event offers biking enthusiasts the chance to ride a challenging 240km endurance race from Ceres to Sutherland in one day! Our teams took on the challenge to raise money and awareness for Beyond Education.

Thinus, Riaan & Brett at checkpoint 1

After 38km they all rolled into checkpoint 1. The morning chill lingered and some of the guys were feeling the cold and after a brief stop they headed off into the Karoo, all still ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’! The next two legs of the journey was sure to warm them up! It was fast and flat open roads, one river crossing and a 1400m ascent before dropping down to checkpoint 3, where their faithful support team would be waiting for them.

John, Mark and Willie at checkpost 3.

The guys were feeling the long day at the second last checkpoint, 142km mark. They had been riding for 7 hours and needed to stock up on food, drinks and well, anything they could get their hands on! At this point, on average, they had burnt approx. 5000 calories! Phew! We were so proud of them as they headed into the prevailing winds with the mammoth Ouberg Pass looming in the next 49km.

Ouberg pass

Onward and upwards! Our riders tackled the highest elevation of the ride at 1700m. This gruelling 11km ascent is not for the faint hearted and is certainly a test of mental & physical strength and endurance. They pushed through the hard moments with encouraging words, jokes and a general feeling of camaraderie.

At the summit of Ouberg Pass, the last checkpoint, the riders were welcomed by a huge fire, ribs and sausage! Only another 49km to the finishing line!

Omri and Mark at the finishing line!

At 9.45pm Brett was the first to come in, followed by the rest of the team, all tired, cold and hungry. It was great seeing their elate and animated faces as they passed the finishing line. Well done guys! You really are fantastic! Thank you for raising sponsorship and support for Beyond Education.

Rosa doing a survey to see the needs and wants of the ladies at Recycle Swop Shop.

Last week Rosa conducted a survey to understand the needs and wants of the ladies and gentlemen at Recycle Swop Shop. We asked them questions like… Can you think of ways that would improve the system at Recycle Swop Shop? What items do we not supply enough of? What groceries would you like to see in the shop? What other environmental projects would you like to see in Du Noon?

We are still gathering all the data, but we learned a lot about the queuing and the first come – first serve system. They asked for items like washing up liquid, Face Cream and fresh vegetables. Many asked for a community vegetable garden. We also took the opportunity to show them some of the refill bags and how by saving the original bottle, we can sell the refills for much less. We especially like “Shield” deodorant that cost R11 or 11 token and the refill that cost R6 or 6 tokens.

Over the past 3 months we have been collecting data from the amount and type of recycling that each person brings, to the items they purchase in swop shop. All the data is connected by a loyalty card number. With the help of Sarah Wittman, we will be translating the data into graphs and hope to show trends in how swop shop has effected the lives of those who visit regularly.

Here are the stats for the 13th March 2012:

Kids shopping at the recycle swop shop

An essential part of the Recycle Swop Shop is education. We are able to really get involved in educating the local children on
the importance of their environment, and on how they can play an active role in preserving it. They can learn from this unique and simple exchange of seemingly waste products to goods, like clothes, shoes, toys, toiletries and food. This system teaches them the hard work ethic and that there is always hope in even the rubbish that litters their streets.

Khanyisa bringing her recycling

Most of the children exchange their recycling for toys, but we were touched by a little girl called Khanyisa who for the past few weeks has been bringing between 5 and 10 bags a week and has been quite adamant in spending her points on clothes for herself. Here at swop shop, she can choose what she wants to wear and has been having so much fun doing it.

Louise, Jita and Patricia run the kids Recycle Swop Shop on Thursday and are loving it! They are an amazing team with so much energy and enthusiasm for these children and the welfare of them. Wow! You do an amazing job and the kids love you! Thank you!

Footprints recycling centre overloaded

Here’s more information from the original article, about what this garbage collection system in Barcelona does:

“The city currently has three ecoparks that manage 60 percent of the waste produced by the city and provide enough energy for its own electricity needs with a plan to support some 800 nearby housing units as well. Guided tours of the plant are becoming a popular education destination.”

Pneumatic tube collection portals in London (left) and a diagram of collection points in cities like Barcelona (top).

COURTESY ENVAC

In Roosevelt Island’s Pneumatic Tubes and the Future of Cities article they ask… “What if we radically changed the way we move garbage through the city?” Check out Gregory Whitmore’s AVAC System, DVD.

Wow! What if we could have this kind of system in Cape Town?

Doreen owner of Nmququ Car Wash, Du Noon

Its always great to meet an Entrepreneur! Today Doreen came to Swop Shop for the first time with 5 very full and heavy bags of Sheen Extreme cans. Doreen runs a busy little car wash just around the corner in Usasazo Street, Du Noon. She employes 6 people and mainly cleans taxis and cars. She hopes to grow her business and employ more people from the area. Doreen will be saving all her recyclables from now on and bringing them to Swop Shop. Well Done Doreen! You are doing a fantastic job!

Interesting Recycling Facts:
- Recycling tin and steel cans saves between 60-74% of the energy used to produce them from raw materials.
- 1 ton of recycled steel saves the energy equivalent of 3.6 barrels of oil, and 1.49 tons of iron ore over the production of new steel. Benefits of Recycling

Here are the stats for the 21st February 2012:

Putting the emphases on plastic!

This year at the Recycle Swop Shop we have made a few adjustments on why and how we work with our recycling. We learned from last year that cardboard was A LOT of hard work and with little value on the recycling market. Also cardboard has so many uses in our townships e.g. insulation, compost and compost for earth worm bins.

So we made a decision to put an emphases on plastic. We are now giving 3 tokens for each bag of plastic and 1 token for each bag of glass, tin or cardboard. We have noted an increase in plastic, which was the desired result, and decrease in everything else. We have negotiated a better price with our recycling buy back center, but this has come with some additional refining to our sorting process!!! That process was to sort PET1 into 2 different colours and remove ALL the lids. Hard work?…Yes, well rather tedious to say the least! Note: we already sort 1 PET (polyethylene terephthalate) clear coke, cooldrink or bottled water bottles, 2 HDPE (high density polyethylene) white or coloured milk, juice or shampoo bottles, 4 LDPE (low density polyethylene) most plastic bags and 5 PP (polypropylene).

The next step is to educate and reward the people bringing the recycling to remove lids and sort by colour. Meet Spokazi! She is our volunteer that heads up the team that sort the plastic and over the past 4 months has become such a valued team member. Thank you Spokazi – you do a wonderful job!

Lovely Spokazi - she heads up the ladies sorting plastic.

Here are the stats for last week and yesterday:

Princess with her little girl on her back.

We have some lovely people that come to the Recycle Swop Shop, one of them is Princess. She comes regularly and brings about 25 – 30 bags of plastic and cardboard that she precariously stacks and ties onto a trolley. This week we asked her some questions…Where does she collect her recycling? How many days does it take to collect? What does she like about Swop Shop? Here are her answers…

I collect my recycling from the streets in Du Noon. It upsets me that the people just throw their empty bottles on the streets, but I can turn their rubbish into something good for me. At Swop Shop I always know that I can come home with some food to put in the pot. I like that! I collect from the taxi rank and from the shops. It takes me from Thursday to Tuesday to collect all my bags. Its hard work, but worth it. I like to buy clothes here because clothes in the shops are very expensive, but here I can find nice clothes that I swap with my tokens. Its great!

Thank you Princess for sharing your story! Well done! This project is really working for unemployed people like Princess that make it their job to collect recycling and swap it at Swop Shop every Tuesday.

Community working hard

This week at Swop Shop we saw a real shift in the community of Du Noon and the ownership of this project. Our Operations Manager, Jita managed the day and all the volunteers were from the Du Noon community. Elliot and Spokazi sorted the plastic, a few ladies from the queue packed the cardboard, Jessica make sandwiches, Patiswa and Patrica worked in the swop shop and Jita handed out tokens. What a great day!

Today we had our first full loyalty cards! Well Done to the regular recyclers, they each received their 4 extra tokens and they were overjoyed!

We collected a total of 917 kg of recycling.

Cardboard & Paper = 363 kg
Plastic = 475 kg
Glass = 72 kg
Tin = 7 kg

Patrick and Don't Touch (his dog)

Hooray! Recycle Swop Shop is back up and running! Yesterday we saw many of our faithful regulars back with their Loyalty cards and lots of recycling.

Patrick and his Dog “Don’t Touch” were there with 19 bags of recycling which he brings to Swop Shop loaded up in a trolley. He has difficulty walking after a car accident back in 2010. Last week Keagan, one of our volunteers, ran to help Patrick push his trolley down the steep entrance and “Don’t Touch” ran towards him barking and warning him to keep away! Keagan was fine! It was actually great to see such a good relationship between a Man and his Dog. We don’t currently stock dog food at the Recycle Swop Shop, but if you would like to donate some bags to help feed Dogs like “Don’t Touch”, please email us. Maria@beyonded.org

We collected a total of 1266 kg of recycling.

Cardboard & Paper = 466 kg
Plastic = 506 kg
Glass = 273 kg
Tin = 21 kg

Here we all are in the cable car...no turning back Louise!

The 5th of December was National Volunteers Day and what an appropriate day for us to be taking our volunteers on a day out to Table Mountain! This group of hard working people, give their time and energy to the Recycle Swop Shop each week and we honestly could not run it without their help. So this was our way of treating them and making them feel special.

Big thank you to Table Mountain Cable Car Company for sponsoring our 20 volunteers the tickets to go up and down the mountain. Also a huge thank you to Kate at Melissa’s Food Shop Blouberg for the delicious sandwiches.

The day started out so sunny and bright and were singing in the car on our way to Cape Town. We sounded terrible & we got some strange looks from fellow drivers with this strange mix of Xhosa and English songs, but it was fun!

Once in the cable car we started to ascended into a mystical fairytale land…called a big wet cloud. This was strange & weird, but also quite enchanting in its own way. We ate our yummy sandwiches, told everyone how much we loved them and joined a guided tour where we learnt so many interesting facts about the fauna and flora. We met a Dassie, ate lots of Quality Streets and our calls to each other where lost in the mist. We were unable to experience the amazing panoramic view, but we created our own unique experience and enjoyed the day tremendously.