Plastic Venture

Plastic Venture is both plastic collectors and recyclers that use a mobile app to collect the plastics from the end-users and turn them into school desks.

Plastic Venture turns the tons of plastic bottles and single-use plastic items into durable school desks, outdoor and indoor furniture.  So far, we have recycled eleven tons of plastic waste that would otherwise end up in the environment and cause a huge problem to our environment. And we have produced over 100 school desks and housing furniture. Neverthless, we use an online app that helps us collect plastics from various people in the country.

 Our online app lets users sign-up, upload their national identity, and verify. After that, the user would check our online platform and tell us his location and how many plastics he has. After he tells us this information, he would say whether he is interested in house furniture or money to exchange plastics. Then, our team checks and writes down the number of plastic points since we collect the plastics weekly from the users who have notified us and repay them simultaneously. After the collection, we mold those single-use plastic and bottles wastes into valuable items like school desks and chairs that last for a long time. 

As a new state that has come out of long conflict and civil war, Somalia has been a victim of major toxic pollutants. Only 6 percent of all plastic waste produced has been recycled in Somalia. About 12 % has been incinerated, while the rest-79 has accumulated in landfills, oceans, and the natural environment. However, researchers found that over a million animals, including goats and marine animals, die each year alone after ingesting or becoming entrapped in improperly discarded trash. Last year alone in Somalia, over 10,000 marine animals have been killed due to plastic pollution. This includes whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions. However, the researchers stressed out that over 198 tons of plastic will end up in Somali oceans for the next five years if nothing has been done now. There are over 98 companies that produce soft drinks with bottles and this includes Cocacola in Somalia. According to the Ministry of Planning in Somalia, each year, around 87 tons of plastic are produced by these companies alone. However, these companies dont have a recycling company, and because of this, most of these plastics end up in the environment and the oceans. 

Our mobile app targets the community of the plastics wastes responsible persons ranging from the public places cleaners, houses waste collectors (individual and companies) who are empowered to sort the garbage to earn extra income out of their effort. Within this segment, more than 70% of it is comprised of women and girls who were previously deprived of educational or employment opportunities. We particularly target public place cleaners from suburbs areas living on under 2 dollars daily with women and girls above 18-year age given the particular interests. In addition, our end products target, hospitality industry, educational institutions, and households by which over 82% of tasks done there from culturally recognized to be the responsibility of women. Hence availing the furniture to them, make the women and girl’s work easier.

 Our Venture has come alive two years ago. However, we have started the process of creating this Venture four years ago. For two years, we have been conducting research, surveys, and interviews about the problems we wanted to solve and the solutions we want to implement to see people's reactions before implementing them. However, after two years of conducting interviews and surveys, we found out that Somalia doesn't have an influential recycling industry that tackles plastic waste. 

Nevertheless, we shared our solutions with so many people. They were very excited to see it and even told us that this solution could enable the country to get a clean environment while creating tremendous job opportunities. Not only this, but we also conducted our prototypes three years ago, and we shared so many local people in Somalia, and the feedback we got was extremely positive. We learned that so many people loved our products and wanted to buy more school desks from us.

Plus, as the founder of Plastic Venture, I had the privilege of serving Green Company in Tanzania as the head of the recycling manager. After two years of working with them, I managed to create an online system that enables it to collect more Plastics across the country. However, I left this job two years ago when I identified that my country has an issue with plastics, and today, I'm glad I'm working on a company that is making the lives of Somalia better.

Plastic Venture has been registered two years ago, and up-to-date, the Venture has recycled over eleven tons of plastic waste and produced over 100 school desks. Plus, we have managed to generate a revenue of 2500 dollars last year alone. We have also managed to get around 50 permanent customers, who constantly buy our products. However, we have sent constantly surveys to our current customers and asked for honest and constructive feedback, and we are overwhelmed by the positive feedback we always receive from our current customers.

Nevertheless, we remain the cheapest school desk seller across the country. Most companies sell their school desks and furniture for four dollars each, but for us, we sell each school desk for 3 dollars, and our products have excellent quality.   However, we are hoping to increase our production and improve the quality of our product constantly while also working on our marketing strategies to attract more customers and clients for the next few years to come.

Plastic Venture is both plastic collectors and recyclers that use a mobile app to collect the plastics from the end-users and process the collected plastics into house furniture and building bricks. However,  our mobile app enables users to sign-up, upload their identity, and verify. Then the user would tell us the number of plastics he has and the area of collection. We enable the user to sell the plastics in exchange for cash or new furniture through this app. We then start collecting these plastics and bring them into our office for processing. So, as soon as the Plastic Venture starts collecting, they repay those who have used the app and connect them. After collection, we mold those single-use plastic wastes into valuable items that last for decades.

Our online app targets the community of the plastics wastes responsible persons ranging from the public places cleaners, houses waste collectors (individual and companies) who are empowered to sort the garbage to earn extra income out of their effort. Within this segment, more than 70% of it is comprised of women and girls who were previously deprived of educational or employment opportunities. We mainly target public place cleaners from suburbs living on under 2 dollars daily with women and girls above 18-year age given the particular interests. In addition, our end products target, hospitality industry, educational institutions, and households by which over 82% of tasks done there from culturally recognized to be the responsibility of women. Hence availing the furniture to them, make the women and girl’s work easier. However, we are hoping to reach different regions across the country next year and share more information about our work with so many underprivileged people so that they can benefit from our business opportunity. That being said, we are hoping to serve around 1200 people that live in different regions in Somalia, and create different operation centers in many regions in the country which will hopefully increase the Company's production.

Plastic Venture has been in operation for two years. However, it has managed to recycle eleven tons of plastic waste that would otherwise end up in the environment. Also, the Venture has produced over 100 school desks and furniture. However, the Venture has attracted more than 50 customers currently. But the Venture aims to collect around 35 tons of Plastic waste and produced over 400 school desks and new furniture. Nevertheless, the Venture has enabled over 6oo people across the city to benefit from the Venture's app and get some income benefit for just exchanging plastic waste, and the venture aims to double that number by the next two years and share with the people ways that so many people can benefit from this business opportunity.

 Plastic Venture is a startup yet and has been working to find an excellent measurement to ensure its progress. However, the Venture has been using three different things to measure the Venture's progress and impact. They are job creation, plastic collection, and school desk production. We can manage the number of plastic collected each week by using a weighting system. We have a small balanced machine that tells us the number of wights. SO, whoever our plastic truck arrives, we put every plastic on balance to check the number and record it. Through this, we can see if we reach our yearly plastic collection target or not. Also, we compare the number of job opportunities yearly, and through checking the number of employees, we can tell if we create more job opportunities this year or not. Nevertheless, we record the number of bricks we produced each week, and through recording, we can assess whether we made our target products each month.

In addition, impact measurement and evaluation were the skills that we want to enhance in our team; we have had a blind spot in measuring our impact. Hence, we believe that having these skills in our group would help us be more effective and save us some financial resources to impact the community and business development further.

 Collecting the wastes from every point has been the challenge within our solution's further development and scaling. As people become more aware of our solutions and the existence of our mobile app, they are increasingly signup from different locations ranging from urban to pre-urban. However, as we scale, we would need to get the waste from small commercial centers from rural communities—nevertheless, the cost of transport would rise as the distance increases. Thus, we would set up small collection centers in most pre-urban areas, which many users can bring into these offices. Then the Plastic Venture team will arrange transportation to collect these plastics and get into the big city office.

Moreover, our current production is not where it is supposed to be. Still, we are hoping to find another melter machine by taking loans or looking for grants to get this machine to produce adequate products. Neverthless, we dont have large customers yet, but we are hoping to gain more customers and clients through constructive and consistent marketing strategies.

Suleiman Ali is the Chief Operation Officer of Plastic Venture. He is tasked with developing high-quality business strategies and ensuring their alignment with short- and long-term objectives. He is a graduate of Hargeisa University and has a degree in Environmental studies. He has over four years of experience in the field of Environment and recycling.

 Jimcale Faarah is the Chief Executive Officer.  He implements business operations, establishes policies that promote the company’s culture, vision and oversees the operation of the company and the work of the executive. He has a degree in Agriculture and computer and has over two years of experience in recycling, app development, and entrepreneurship. 

 Hamda  Ahmed is the chief Marketing chief officer. She has a degree in Computer science and has two years of experience in Web development, mobile app, and digital media . She has worked with so many e-commerce companies in Hargeisa and now she is the head of the marketing team of Plastic Venture. She often creates advertising posts about the products and engages the new and old clients and customers.

Nimo Ali is the chief developer of the company's tech issue. She has a double in Computer science and has over three years of experience in Web development and mobile app.  She is responsible for the company's mobile development, design, and layout of websites according to a company's specifications.

Agri company  Somalia: the largest solid waste collection and sorting company in east Africa. We have been collaborating with this company to supply us with the plastics wastes that we further recycle in the valuable furniture for schools, homes, hotels, restaurants,s and recreational centers. This company is playing a vital role in increasing the quantity of the plastics we recycle on monthly basis, we believe that with their support, we can easily achieve our yearly goals all the time.

 2. British council in Somalia is an important partner to our company. Previously, it has enabled one of our projects which design a reliable bioplastics packaging solution that heavily reduces people's dependence on fossil-fuel-based plastics. It gave us mentorship support, and support in spreading the word about our organization.

  Our solution empowers economically disadvantaged women to generate revenue in addition to their minimal minimum for their informal jobs. We mainly target public place cleaners from suburbs living on under 2 dollars daily with women and girls above 18-year age given the particular interests. In addition, our end products target, hospitality industry, educational institutions, and households by which over 82% of tasks done there from culturally recognized to be the responsibility of women. Hence availing the furniture to them, make the women and girl’s work easier. Thus, we believe that our solution positively impacts Somali girls and women, and we are hoping to create more job opportunities for the next few years. Therefore, we will use this prize to double our positive impact by collecting another 35 plastic waste and getting new recycling machines that will enable us to recycle more plastics and produce more products.

 We beleive the negative impact of climate change is real. We believe it's an urgent thing that we all need to contribute to building a world free of climate change disasters. However, our Venture has been working hard to combat plastic pollution to ensure that everyone in Somalia gets a clean and healthy environment. Thus, we believe that our Venture is dealing with a common problem for all of us regardless of our gender. Therefore, we believe that our solution contributes to the well-being of everyone in Somalia. That being said, we are hoping to use this Prize to collect another 32 Tons of plastic waste that would end up in Somlai's environment and cause terrible toxic pollution. Plus, we hope to use this Prize to create job opportunities for another five young girls to help them learn practical skills,  experience, and increase their income.