Swop Shop
"Get something fantastic for your plastic" - the swop shop in Senga Bay
Everybody knows them, they can be found everywhere: plastic bags and papers! But they not only destroy the beautiful landscape of Malawi, they are also a danger to environment by polluting the ground and being harmful to plants and animals. Plastic that doesn’t end up in the environment usually gets burned since there is no nationwide waste management system. But that also is dangerous as it is a threat to environment as well as health since it causes air pollution by releasing toxic gases.
That’s why Cool Projects in Senga Bay, Salima, opened up the Swop Shop in July 2018. Since then it has been run by motivated Malawian and international volunteers. The idea of Swop Shop is that community members of all ages can collect plastic from the surrounding area, bring it to Swop Shop and swap it for different kinds of goods, according to the slogan: “Get something fantastic for your plastic!”
At Swop Shop the plastic first gets sorted and cleaned before it then gets weighed. For each collected kg, customers get one point. The points can then be traded into different goods at the shop. The goods offered are: Clothing, school supplies, sweets, hygiene products or bigger items like footballs, football kits or suitcases. For the more expensive items, customers can bank their points and save up.
Every week Swop Shop is collecting hundreds of kgs of plastic which gets transferred to a recycling company in Lilongwe, so that it doesn’t end up in the environment again.
