In three different countries, in four very different situations KOLEKT has been honed and tested, achieving a total of 7,200 transactions between waste pickers, waste buyers and recyclers, resulting in the sale of 5,400 tonnes of recyclables in Vietnam, Brazil and Mozambique. Additionally, people working in waste management in other countries including India, Indonesian, Jordan and Mexico have also been downloading the app, where it works in the local languages.
In Vietnam, KOLEKT is being used to offer, buy and sell used beverage cartons in a project funded by Tetra Pak Vietnam. With previously no value to waste pickers, used cartons remained in the environment, but in a project run in partnership with PRO Vietnam, they are now being collected and traded with waste aggregators, for onward recycling into paper and composite building materials. More about this project.
“We can now advertise our continuous demand for recyclable cartons and cardboard (OCC), modifying our asking price and conditions. This brings us new and unexpected suppliers that can bid to deliver to us directly.” Ms Diem, Procurement Manager of Dong Tien Paper Vietnam, a paper recycling company in Saigon.In Mozambique, the recycling association AMOR is using KOLEKT to register and buy marine plastics from community waste pickers and beach cleaners. Through the transparency of the transactions on the app, the recycler has been able to pay bonuses to the most prolific collectors.
And in Rio de Janeiro Brazil, KOLEKT is being used by fishers using their non fishing days to collect marine waste and earn an additional income in a project run in collaboration with Brazilian NGO, BVRio. The fishers are paid incentives for all marine waste collected with the support of Italian social enterprise Ogyre. More about this project.
“KOLEKT is uncomplicated, easy to use, easy to understand, and very intuitive.” Ronaldo Barboza, Fishing for Litter project, Fisher Coordinator.
Also in Rio, two waste picker cooperatives are using KOLEKT to monitor the plastic recyclables bought and sorted from two residential buildings without access to municipal waste collections. Funding from the Alliance to End Plastic Waste is being used to pay incentives to these cooperatives when transactions take place, increasing wages and allowing investment in infrastructure. Read more about this project.
KOLEKT is the world’s first multi-material global waste management app. This innovative free app brings together solid waste producers, collectors and recyclers. KOLEKT creates traceability of waste along the whole supply chain and then maps all stakeholders involved in the process. It records data in a format that allows for more efficient monitoring, validation, verification and certification of waste recovery and recycling against recognised standards. Materials are registered in the app by weight, type and condition, and the date and place of collection is recorded along with photographs, so that actors in the whole collection and recycling chain can see the materials on offer, or requested, near them.
KOLEKT has recently been updated with some new features including the addition of more material categories, such as marine waste, hazardous waste, construction materials, and general waste. A points system has been activated, allowing users to generate points for different activities which can then be cashed-out, providing pickers with another opportunity for additional income. Country specific announcements have been added and there are new backend analytics available to licensed users.
“What we are most proud of, is that KOLEKT now works for informal collectors that have a simple feature phone, or even no phone at all. This allows them to receive points, trade, and login to cash out their points using face recognition with the app installed on someone else’s smartphone. We need to make technology work for the poor, because they asked us to, and they helped us design it.” Reflects Thierry Sanders, Circular Action, Director and app developer