The Plastic Bank fights against waste and poverty

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The project involves the collectors’ community in South America and Haiti, which can then resell waste to production plants.

Ecological, ethical and supportive. The new Plastic Bank, created by the Canadian businessman David Katz, has the aim to eliminate virgin plastic production by acting as a broker for the recycling companies that need scrap materials. According to Katz, this is a system with a double benefit, because plastic comes from poor communities.

The Plastic Bank completed last year a pilot programme in Peru and Colombia and will shortly launch a broader programme in Haiti, where it plans to create 30 collection centres that employ only independent collectors.

“We transform plastic into a currency that poor people do not realise they have“, says Katz. The initiative has important partners, such as the cosmetic giant Lush, which not only financed the bank, but also committed itself to use plastic from the project for its packaging. Potential customers are many, particularly in the growing field of 3D printing. Katz’s group is also developing a system to produce the 3D printing fibre from plastic waste.

Katz is convinced that if people realise that plastic is not just waste, this will have a powerful domino effect on the entire planet. It would be possible to eliminate plastic from rivers and seas, and therefore from beaches, all over the world, and at the same time living standards for poor people would improve.