ReciVeci, Ecuador

Project name: ReciVeci

Project location: Quito, Ecuador

Website: http://www.reciveci.ec/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reciveci/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/reciveci

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reciveci/

Project description

RECIVECI is a citizen's volunteers initiative that promotes inclusive recycling in Ecuador. We are a group of neighbors in Quito that work together to build a recycling culture by creating a human bond between the waste picker and the citizen.

RECIVECI is currently working in a pilot neighborhood in Quito, where neighbors (the “Vecis”) are the project’s protagonists, as results are expected at a neighborhood level. Our dream is that ReciVeci will become a replicable model for other neighborhoods in the city and nationwide.

Goal and purpose of the project

RECIVECI is a citizens initiative focused on increasing and enhancing the work of waste pickers in Ecuador through education and conscious citizen involvement. 

RECIVECI works to protect the environment, improve and make visible the work of waste pickers, implementing a recycling service with recyclers and building a recycling culture in the country.

RECIVECI is composed by a team of 15 people, with diverse backgrounds and one common interest: inclusive recycling. We work in:

• Increasing the percentage of recyclable material segregation in Ecuadorian homes.

• Improving the recycling efficiency of waste pickers.

• Educating neighbors and linking them directly to their neighborhood waste pickers.

• Generating tools to strengthen citizen education through workshops, mobile apps, social networks.

• Strengthening the social organization of waste pickers and boosting their entrepreneurship potential.

Motivation of the applicant / applicant team

RECIVECI is born out of a need to improve recycling at the source in Quito-Ecuador, as only 25% of the potentially recyclable material is processed, the remaining materials end up in landfills and dumps (The municipality has not implemented any system or service for the compilation of recyclable material). Also, only 38% of households nationwide segregated their waste in 2014, this shows we have lots of work to do! 

But the main motivation of our organization is to visualize and dignify the work of recyclers, considering that more than 70% of waste pickers in Ecuador are women, who maintain their families with the income earned from recycling. Being part of an informal sector that is socially and economically excluded, they don’t have access to social security, loans and regular benefits available to an ordinary citizen. 
RECIVECI promotes a professional service that is not currently acknowledged; it is anonymous, invisible and feminine.

Use of prize money

With the investment, we want to extend our work to at least two neighborhoods in Quito. The money will be invested in:

• Identification and support of waste pickers in the neighborhood.  

• Door to door training of residents in our pilot area about waste segregation at home and its delivery to their neighborhood recycler.

• Buying work equipment, such as scales, so that the recyclers and ReciVeci can generate statistics and indicators of the impact of the door-to-door collection service, which will be visualized in our mobile app.

• Purchasing of complete work apparel for the recyclers including aprons, gloves, rain ponchos, tricycles for waste collection, identification tags, big bags, etc.

• Currently, the app and website are working as an educational channel for environmental training, with the investment we want to make the app more interactive, including data and indicators so the users would know how much they are recycling. Also, we would use the money to update the app and the webpage.