UPSKILL – Upcycle (Compost & Recycle)

The UPSKILL – Upcycle project is an important part to teach the community to recycle, upcycle and create value from the items we toss on the dump. 

This program has been in progress for 9 months already with our Compost Guru Chris Griffen together with Graham setting up two composting sites that are now rerouting all the green waist from the municipal dump to the composting sites. This is saving the municipality money and time and helping to stop green waist clogging up the dump. 

The second composting site is in the very poor part of town where the soil is very hard and we are teaching the local residents to make compost and prepare their soil with compost and mulch to help them to grow their own food gardens that provide them with healthy food.

To make good compost there needs to be three main components, wood chippings, cow manure and green kitchen scraps. The wood chippings we get from the municipal chipper that comes to chip the green waist dropped that would otherwise have gone to the dump. We fetch cow manure from Suurbraak the neighboring town and get some manure from farmers with horses and sheep in the village. We have a compost bucket system that fetches 20 L buckets from the hotels, restaurants and private homes in the community every Tuesday.

We are working in conjunction with the Swellendam Municipality and the Solid Waist Manager Johan Van Niekerk to set up a Green Circular economy where all items that you throw out are source separated to become recycled items before they go to the dump. We are working with Francois from Barrydale Recycling where we teach the youth to pick up glass and plastic in black bags that they deliver to him for a small income. 

The next stage is to have the youth learn how to make salable items from the glass bottles and the plastic bottles that they bring to sell at the Saturday and Sunday markets.