Thriving secondary commodity markets for metals, paper and board, concrete, some plastics and many end-of-life items boost the world’s landfill diversion rate. Beyond that, non-profit organizations have been stepping in to find ways to repurpose non-commodity discarded items like soap and paint.
Hong Kong-based Soap Cycling is a nonprofit organization established in 2012 to collect, sanitize and redistribute the considerable volumes of barely used soap generated in hotels there. The organization benefits from a continual procession of lodgers in Hong Kong who generate an ongoing flow of barely used bars and bottles of soap—products that can play a valuable hygiene role in local households or in parts of the world where soap is difficult to afford.
The Paint Foundation, based in New York, says its mission is “to provide environmentally sustainable reuse options to generators for their non-salable, non-useable waste [and] to recycle it back in a circular economy, creating products of use and value for developing communities.” The organization is backed by the Mumbai-based Matawala Group Of Industries and Matawala Paints, which uses its paint making facilities and technical know-how to make “production batches of 53 different types of recycled-content coatings.” The recycled-content product range includes interior and exterior latex paints and primers, plastic emulsions, bitumen emulsions, stucco putties, as well as synthetic enamels and industrial coatings.
Source: Waste Today Magazine
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