When the Ugandan government ordered all non-essential workplaces shut to contain the coronavirus pandemic in late March, Peter Okwoko and his colleague Paige Balcom kept working. But the pair – who had been turning collected plastic waste into building materials since last year – shifted gear and instead began manufacturing makeshift plastic face shields from discarded plastic bottles. When they posted pictures of their prototypes on social media, they got a surprise phone call from the local public hospital.
“The doctor from Gulu regional referral hospital requested we make 10 face shield masks urgently because they didn’t have enough” and the hospital had just received its first COVID-19 patient, said Okwoko, 29, a co-founder of Takataka Plastics. The social enterprise set to work shredding plastic, melting it and shaping the liquid plastic into face shields and frames. Soon a first set of shields was delivered. But “in the afternoon, the hospital called again. They said they needed more face shields because the previous ones had worked out well for them”, Okwoko said.
To make the face shields – a two-day process – workers sort, clean, shred, melt and mould the waste plastic. Then they attach an adjustable strap, sometimes made from slices of old bicycle innertubes.
The group is manufacturing both single-use shields that cost about one dollar (3,000 Ugandan shillings), with frames made of cheap foam, or reuseable ones, with plastic frames, that cost about $2.70 (10,000 shillings), Okwoko noted. In a country where an estimated 600 tonnes of waste plasic is thrown away dmasaily – more than half it uncollected and less than 5 percent recycled – the effort is also helping battle plastic pollution and dirty air. Burning of plastic waste – which can produce toxic gases and carcinogens – is common, Balcom said. In the northern town of Gulu, where Takataka operates, at least 80% of plastic waste isn’t collected, she said, and piles of it end up in waterways, on roadsides and on vacant land.
Source: Trust
Global site 
Finnish site