The Green Consciousness Project, South Africa

Project name: The Green Consciousness Project

Project location: The City of Ekurhuleni Municipality, Gauteng, South Africa

URL Facebook: www.facebook.com/AGreenMInd

Project video: https://youtu.be/If_b9zzTR_8

Project description:

When people think of Africa, the first thing that pops into their minds is holiday in Cape Town, resources, then these happy thoughts are interrupted by images of poverty, dust, suffering and well...corrupt governments. Well it is time that mindset goes through a paradigm shift.

The Green Consciousness project is an initiative by logistics students to turn the Ekurhuleni Municipality into a green aerotropolis, Ekurhuleni is the city which is home to the OR Tambo International Airport, the largest airport in Africa and it is also an industrial metropolitan area characterised by open areas, manufacturing districts and many informal settlements aside the affluent suburbs due to the heavy influx of people seeking work in the factories. As a result, the living conditions for many are paltry. 

Since the issue stems from hundreds of people living in these areas not prioritising green living, the project team saw it fit to first work on people’s mind sets and educate the community of how to live in a cleaner and more sustainable manner by upcycling, recycling, reusing, living from the ground and how this way of living could contribute to a better future for their young.
This project will be executed in phases, with the important aspect of education at the forefront. For people to adopt a lifestyle they need to consciously make efforts towards enforcing that particular lifestyle up till a point where they do it out of habit. The Green Consciousness Project wants to spur on this mental shift.

Phase 1 
Duration: 3 months
Getting to know why people do what they do. 

• The team has conducted interviews with stakeholders such as the Ekurhuleni Municipality in order to find out what they have done in order to encourage cleaner living and their shortfalls, this has enabled us to spot the gaps in their systems and brainstorm ways in which to bridge these gaps.
• Research is currently underway on how different municipalities deal with waste management in European countries (a good example would be the Etten-Leur Millieu street in North Brabant, The Netherlands)
• Social media is a powerful tool that we are just learning to use to the fullest just to educate people one simple post at a time.
• Vox Pops in areas where people are concentrated to find out if they know what sustainable living is, why they live how they do and what incentives would drive them to live cleaner and more sustainably.

Phase 2
Duration: 12 months
Using the research to implement initiatives

1. Train reclaims people to engage in door to door services educating people on clean living and offer them 'Green Packages' consisting of seeds, different coloured plastic bags for sorting garbage and a booklet on sustainable living.
2. Employ people to visit primary schools engaging young minds on the importance of clean living. For this to be continuous, they will be assigned 5 schools each which they will visit weekly. These schools will also be used as recycling collection points.
3. Create recycling collection points which will be used by people who want to make money by being reclaims people and delivering the collected waste to the recycling companies.
4. Contact packaging companies to discuss buy back policies and prices, contact retailers to see whether they would be willing to house recycling machines like the ones in use in The Netherlands and Germany.

Phase 3
Duration: TBC
Automation and widespread reach

1. Pitch the project to other municipalities
2. Implement automation and widespread reclaims points
3. Invest in machinery for reclaims
4. Engage local government on policy change in the direction of clean living

Phase shifts will be characterised by time, milestone achievement and satisfactory indicators to track progress and not just rush through the process, this is because every phase is more capital intensive than the previous. By the beginning of the third phase enough information will be gathered on which types of machinery will be suitable and how the roll-out of the recycling logistics programme will be conducted.By the end of the second phase, the effectiveness of the programme will be quantified by conducting a survey and more vox pops in the chosen communities.

Reporting will be done mid phase, to allow room for changes to be made in time, and at the end of every phase a full report will be conducted on the effectiveness of the mid-term report, the budget expenditure, the benefits, and the downsides that the project encountered. 

Goal and purpose of the project:

To holistically conscientise people to live a cleaner life.

1. Eat cleaner food. plant vegetable gardens and trade with neighbours.
2. To view recycling as a necessity and not as something abstract.
3. Raise children who engage with clean sustainable living on all levels, coming up with innovative ideas which they can begin and execute on their own.

Motivation of the applicant / applicant team:

Motivation
Being on a scholarship programme to study logistics in Europe, the green agenda is a topic that is prevalent in lectures. Moving towards how projects can be made more sustainable, use less energy and recycle more is the direction in which most companies. The recycling process is a logistical problem and as people who love and are interested in logistics this posed a challenge.

Also, juxtaposed with our communities back home, the way in which people live in the city of Breda is significantly cleaner, as they recycle out of habit because of the environmental policies in place. This has sparked a fire not only to target the actual act of recycling, but the mindsets of our people.

Use of prize money: 

The budget items listed below are for phase one and two, the impact of these two phases will determine whether the project can progress to the third phase by means of a cost benefit analysis, after which further capital will need to be raised in order to automate the recycling progress and invest in research and design of alternative options. In order for the project to be continuous it is important for the project to source funding from different avenues annually.

1. Employment towards Skills Development
   Green Consciousness plans to employ 3-5 individuals over a period of a year at minimum wage to do school visits and facilitate recyclable collection. During school holidays these individuals will be engaging the community at large in door to door campaigns
   Reach: 15 - 25 primary schools approximately at 1000 learners each =
   20 000 potential families reached
   Success Indicator: Vegetable garden harvest, volume of recyclable waste collected, environment change.
   Budget: 10 000 euro disbursed over 12 months
2. Green Packs
   seeds, brochures, coloured refuse bags for waste separation
   Reach: 1 per household targeting 2 000 - 2 500 households 
   Success Indicator: Community awareness and vegetable bartering effectiveness (via survey)
   Budget: 3000 euro
3. Operational Costs
   local transportation, uniform for team (golf shirts), telephone and internet costs.
   Budget: 2000 euro