These Ladies Pick up Plastic Waste to Earn Money, Clean Streets and Build Schools

A group of women in Abidjan, Ivory Coast are collecting plastic waste to be transformed into durable bricks to build schools across the country – allowing them to earn a living, clean the environment and help improve education.

The women are part of an association called “The Fighting Women”, led by Mariam Coulibaly who’s been collecting trash for recycling for the past two decades. They are now working with Colombian company Conceptos Plásticos which has agreed with UNICEF to build 528 classrooms for around 26,400 students.

Between 2018 and 2019, the project managed to build nine demonstration classrooms out of recycled plastic bricks imported from Colombia. Now, the bricks will be made locally in a new factory in Abidjan, and the company expects to buy plastic from 1,000 women within a year.

The women have long been earning their living selling plastic garbage for recycling, but the new project may double – or even triple – their income, as they’ll be able to sell even more types of plastic that hasn’t been sellable before.