Zero Plastic Waste City – Barranquilla, Colombia

Among the 20 most polluted rivers on the planet, the Magdalena River ranks 15th. The main cause of the contamination can be attributed to a striking combination of insufficient waste management. For this reason, it is urgently needed to empower the communities and implement projects that involve different actors: municipalities, the private sector, academia and NGOs, which will facilitate a sustainable and long-term solution.

Silvia Gómez, director of Greenpeace Colombia points out that "90% of the beaches on the Atlantic coast are contaminated with microplastic”. Our project Zero Plastic Waste City implement a sustainable solution through the empowerment of the community and the support of stakeholders that will lead to the creation of social businesses in the region to solve the pollution and lack of efficient waste management by empowering the informal plastic waste value chain, thus generating economic opportunities and increasing the rates of recycled materials creating higher circularity.

The entire population of Barranquilla (around 1,2 million inhabitants) is affected by the problem and the number of people and ecosystems affected overall includes populations in different regions of the Caribbean as the systemic problem is the same in all places. According to El Tiempo: "more than 18 kilometers of coastline in the Atlantic are affected by waste brought in by the Magdalena River." in the Barranquilla region alone. In addition, an island of garbage is currently located in front of the beaches of the municipality of Puerto Colombia, in the metropolitan area of Barranquilla. The pollution in the bay affects the health of the population, the ecosystem and the tourism in the coastal area, as well as impact the region's economy with negative consequences.

It is precisely against this backdrop of much-needed capacity building in strategic municipal waste segregation, collection and recycling that this project was initiated consisting of a modular social business approach, the program aims to increase the waste collection rates of currently unconsidered waste types and increase the amount of waste being reused for new purposes, while simultaneously empowering local waste pickers.

The modular approach of the Zero Plastic Waste City allows for the development of social business solutions based on the needs of the local communities as well as the gaps in the waste value chain, while being integrated into the existing ecosystem of local waste management stakeholders. Through local stakeholder mapping we identify relevant players and offer spaces for co-creation, learning and exchange. All the social businesses created are initiated and managed by the citizen and its different communities.  

We provide the services and tools needed for making Barranquilla the first Zero Plastic Waste City in Latin America.   This includes a thorough stakeholder, SWOT and Gap analysis as well as social business accelerator, which will bring about financial self-sustainable social business solutions for the identified gaps and needs. We will generate cross sector alliances for the creation of social businesses that aim for solutions on plastic and waste management, recycling, prevention and behavior change.

With the Zero Plastic Waste City we aim not only to reduce the leakage of plastic into the environment, but also to demonstrate how plastic waste can be a viable business opportunity for underprivileged people and how recycling innovations can provide economic value as well as social and environmental benefits.  

We are streamlining a solution that requires highly context specific adaptions to a process that is easy to scale and replicate. Through the social business approach we create further social benefit beyond the business as usual and environmental impacts. 

We would like to invite you to read our latest publication in the World Economic Forum: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/viet-nam-is-building-its-first-zero-plastic-waste-city-heres-how/

1. People we are serving: 300.000

2. People we will be serving in one year: 1.000.000 

3. People we will be serving in five years: 5.000.000 

We measure the impact through:

• tons of plastic waste diverted
• number of jobs/income opportunities created
• number of waste pickers empowered
• Increased public healthcare
• Improved aesthetics of city

We want to launch one other Zero Plastic Waste City and 10 other cities within the next five years (each city with a population of 100,000 – 1 million inhabitants). 

As for the current Zero Plastic Waste Cities possible barriers are cultural in terms of citizen adapting behavioral change and new waste habits as well as for some cases market barriers when it comes to building up new waste markets for currently unconsidered plastic waste types.  

We are working with NGOs and other experts on awareness creation and behavior change to develop and implement customized concepts for each location to achieve socio-economic change. To overcome market barriers constant market research and product innovations are key to building solid financial basis.   

Building on 40 year’s of Grameen’s experience in building social businesses worldwide, the Yunus Environment Hub was launched the patronage of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prof Muhammad Yunus to accelerate environment focused social businesses. Our central objective is to act upon the current environmental crisis through social business based solutions. While engaging in projects across all continents and regions, our activities are clustered into 5 different Action Labs that each follow a more specific goal of environmental sustainability. Fundamental to all activities of the Yunus Environment Hub is the conviction that the concept of social business bears an enormous potential of tackling many of the environmental challenges ahead by combining the creativity and adaptability of business entrepreneurs with a purpose for sustainable impact. 

Latin America is very rich in natural resources that are being threatened by deforestation, pollution and climate change. Only in this region there are eight countries that together treasure nearly 70% of the planet's biodiversity. 

We are a social business organization, non-loss and non-dividend.

8-10 people.

We have over 40 years of experience in the creation of social businesses to address society’s most urgent needs. Our founder Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus was voted as one of the most important entrepreneurs of our century. 

We are partnering with several organizations that we either co-created or are affiliated:

• Yunus Social Business Center ICESI
• Impact Hub Bogotá
• Colombia Circular
• Waste 2 Worth
• Plástico Infinito
• WWF Colombia
• UN Environment
• Amigos del Mar
• Fundación Serena del Mar
• Fundación Planeta Azul

The social business solutions can be clustered into the following modules:

-Harnessing the potential of the informal market – waste picker empowerment and thus efficiency increase in collection;

-Closing the loop on waste collection and sorting – exhaustive, segregated, and smart waste collection systems;

-Pre processing of segregated waste streams – state of the art waste pre processing plants; and

-Circular waste treatment – recycling/composting solutions for segregated waste.

The Zero Plastic Waste City will promote the creation of a social business ecosystem which will generate a positive economic and environmental impact in the region, generating jobs and being replicable. According to Plastic Oceans “recycling in Colombia by now is a million dollar industry that works with about 60,000 waste pickers all over the country and generates more formal (and informal) employment every day.” 

We applied to the Rethink Plastics Challenge because we believe that the Inter-American Development Bank would be the best strategic ally that would allow us to replicate our project in Latin America.

• Municipality of Barranquilla
• University of Barranquilla
• Waste management company in charge for solid waste management
• Packaging industry players
• Organizacion de recicladores
• Impact Hub Bogotá
• Colombia Circular
• Plástico Infinito
• UN Environment
• Further local NGOs for education and awareness creation