Waste from the world’s largest Carnival event went digital for the first time with Kolekt

EPR offers a serious solution for the financing of waste management, but almost all regulations currently in place are selling themselves short.

A significant limitation of many EPR regulations is the narrow focus of fees on collection, sorting, and transportation. This overlooks the critical need for robust waste processing infrastructure.

Founder Thierry Sanders met with the Kolekt app development team in India to discuss future developments that will both improve user experience, but also further develop the architecture for a suite of EPR systems.

Kolekt led a workshop earlier this week for environment leaders from the Governments of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to workshop innovative financing options for addressing plastic pollution in the South Asia region.

The Plastic Collective, a leading social enterprise focused on solving the plastic waste epidemic, will start using the KOLEKT waste management app to monitor all its plastics purchasing and processing transactions.

Two of the nine waste cooperatives that BVRio is helping to professionalise in Rio de Janeiro have started receiving support to digitise their waste flow through the Kolekt app.

The KOLEKT app has reached 10 thousand transactions and gained over 1000 users in 48 countries in the 18 months since its launch. Users are actors throughout the recycling supply chain, including informal waste pickers, who assisted in its design and testing.

The KOLEKT waste management app has just surpassed 10 million kgs of waste traded, 80% of which was plastic, proving the market for plastic recycling is thriving.

The Kolekt waste management app has been adopted by Mozambique’s only commercial plastic recycler, Topack, after a comprehensive pilot project and study.

The KOLEKT waste management app just turned one, and is now in the hands of the very people who helped design it, informal waste pickers. In three different countries, in four very different situations, the app was honed and tested, achieving a total of 7,200 transactions between waste pickers, waste buyers and recyclers, resulting in the sale of 5,400 tonnes of recyclables in Vietnam, Brazil and Mozambique.

Often deemed hard to recycle, beverage cartons are the focus of a new initiative run by Kolekt and BVRio in partnership with Tetra Pak and Packaging Recycling Organisation Vietnam (PRO Vietnam). The project will not only provide a recycling solution, but will also deliver additional income to around 200 informal waste pickers.