Recycle Swop Shop

• Allowing people to provide for themselves and their families, through their own hard work.
• Igniting a belief that these people are able to add value to their community and themselves, thus breaking the mentality of hopelessness.
• Encouraging responsibility and ownership
• Teaching the value of recycling and the environment
• Cleaning up the community, thus instilling pride in the neighbourhood, reducing disease and making the area safer for children to play.

This is how it works:

• People fill up bags of recyclable waste that is lying around the streets in informal settlements.
• These are brought to the Swop Shop, which is set up in a central area.
• The full bags are weighed and sorted by volunteers and tokens are given out for each bag brought.
• With these tokens people enter our shop where they can buy all sorts of necessities such as clothes, food, toiletries and school essentials.

Our Success:

We have seen the incredible difference that this project has made in one of our local informal settlements. We know that Recycle Swop Shop has changed the lives of those living in Du noon, where this project is currently running.

We are currently collecting between 1000-1500 bags when we open our shop once a week.

• That’s 4000+ kg’s of recycling off the street and out of landfills.
• That’s 300+ people who are able to provide food, clothes, toiletries and school essentials for their families every week.
• That’s 40 000+ people who live in Du Noon who are benefiting from cleaner streets, less disease, safer areas for their children to play.

Where we are going:

We don’t want to stop here, at Du Noon. We’re imagining what it would be like to replicate this success story in other informal settlements in Cape Town, across the Western Cape, across South Africa, even into the rest of Africa.

We are wanting to start up more Swop Shops, partner with people who have a passion for uplifting their communities, and see the benifits of this project come to other informal settlements.

We want to start our own sorting yard, employing people to sort the recycling to be able to resell it for a greater value. In time, we would like to start our own recycling plant, where we can recycle our own waste.

How you can help:

We know that Recycle Swop Shop has changed the lives of those living in Du noon. Now, we need your help to change more lives; to impact other communities: in Cape Town; across South Africa; and even further north across our borders.

Whatever you can give goes a long way. You can donate any amount and it will go directly to starting up new shops. You can sponsor goods. You can get involved. With every bit you help, the sphere of this project grows, and we are able to bring more hope and change to a Continent that’s desperate for it.

We ensure that 100% of your donations will be used to fill the shop with basic items. R50 gives the Recycle Swop Shop a school pack and toiletries.

Contact us for more info

A big thank you to:

Pick n Pay Tableview and Fruit & Veg Tableview for supplying the Recycle Swop Shop with day-old bakery items and with this we are able to feed people that bring recycling.

We would like to thank Cape Town International Airport who are one of our sponsors.

All our volunteers who give of their time and effort to help us each week.