Who we are

Repa is a service designed and delivered by Unwaste.io Limited. We are a social enterprise, incorporated and registered in Scotland, United Kingdom. Our company number is SC692977 and our  registered office is at 11 Baron's Hill Avenue, Linlithgow, United Kingdom, EH49 7JU.

Unwaste.io is not a charity. We are a limited company with a social and environmental mission stated in our Articles of Association. We are members of Social Enterprise UK and the PREVENT Waste Alliance.

By creating viable local markets for waste, we enable a circular economy for discarded single use plastic, reducing the amount of plastic polluting our environment, and the volume of virgin plastic imported by plastics processors.

Repa is a waste transaction service that uses our wastebase.org web portal, Wastebase mobile app and other software systems, as well as human team members and transportation providers contracted by Unwaste or its in-country partner organisations and small business aggregators who have agreed to its social franchise principles. Repa enables users to collect and deliver waste with the assurance of a commitment to buy, guaranteeing that their time and labour will result in increased household income. 

Through Repa, we can channel extra funds to waste pickers and aggregators to give them a fairer price for the work they do. 

We pay these extra funds through the Wastebase app as a ‘top up’ payment on top of the price they are paid by the waste buyer.

Waste pickers can earn less than $1 per day. * They will collect the material that is going to earn them the most money on that day.

With Repa, we want to encourage waste pickers to collect more types of waste, including those that are harder to collect and sold for lower values, like soft plastics. We want to create a stable trading environment for waste pickers so that they can have a more secure and reliable income, while helping remove all types of plastic from the environment.

*Based on the waste pickers we work with, their average income is around $30-$90 per month in total. This is usually from a number of activities, including waste collection. Their income is likely to vary from month to month, making it hard to plan for the future.

We want to be fully transparent about how we use donations. Read more about how we use donations here.

We currently operate the service in Maputo, Mozambique and in Lusaka, Zambia. We will be launching in Malawi in the near future, but are not yet giving out Repa funding in this location. Any crowdfunded contributions will support waste pickers in Maputo and Lusaka.

Our service is set up to support any types of plastic waste collection, however, we are only able to support collection of plastics where there are recycling services for that material in the countries in which we operate. We aim to pay more than the market rate for plastics that are harder to collect. Read more about what we collect here.

The Unwaste.io team will make sure that we distribute your funds fairly and transparently. This means we will:

• Cover any costs involved in operating Repa, other than what we’ve stated in ‘how will Repa use my donation?’

• Keep a record of all costs and make a reasonable summary of relevant costs available to supporters on request, in the format we normally use for financial management

• Make sure that we only give out Repa funds to waste pickers and aggregators who are registered with the Repa service, based on recyclable waste they have actually delivered to a reprocessing plant approved by Unwaste.io

• record the date, value, recipient identity and related waste delivery each time we give out Repa funds

• Make sure that we only give out Repa funds to an identifiable human being or waste collection group or social enterprise.

We will give out your funds as quickly as we can to benefit as many waste pickers as we can. The time it takes to ‘disburse’ or give out your contribution depends on how many waste pickers are using the services, what type of materials they are collecting and how many transactions take place.

You can keep track of how we’re using your funds in your personal dashboard. We’ll let you know when your funding runs out.

Our approach is similar to that used by organisations which operate plastic credit schemes. We don’t issue plastic credits for a number of reasons:

• firstly, we believe that they allow organisations which buy the credits, typically in the global north, to avoid making deeper changes to their business models which would help solve the plastic crisis at a structural level.

• secondly, participation in plastic credit schemes typically means a lot of money is spent on desk work by the consultants and verification bodies who give such schemes ‘authenticity’ - we believe money is better spent improving our service based upon real and continuous engagement with the people actually working directly with plastic waste in the global south.

Unwaste.io is subject to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, as set out by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office). Please read our Privacy policy for more information about how we protect your data https://wastebase.org/#/privacy

We will never sell your personal data or share this through our digital platforms or other activities. If we become aware of a situation in which personal data may be being used, or be likely to be used, other than for the purposes which are stated in the privacy policy, we will notify you party within one working day.

We expect our supporters to take reasonable steps to protect personal data that we may share with supporters, including but not limited to:

• Names, email addresses and other contact information of Unwaste.io staff, managed through the Wastebase platform;

• Names, email addresses and other personally identifiable information of people receiving Repa funds, including photographs and videos

• Other personal data which may be received from time to time by individuals interested in participating in activities organized together by Unwaste.io.

When we work with businesses and community organisations, we’d be happy to share brand assets, content and quotes for your media and publicity where this will support our mission. However, we ask that these are only ever used with our written permission and in the formats supplied by us.

If you’d like to discuss marketing or access materials, please get in touch.

If we believe that we can’t operate the service reasonably and fairly due to conditions in a particular country, such as political conflicts, regulatory changes, attempts to defraud the fund, we will suspend the service in that country.

If we don’t think that we can start the service again within 15 working days, we’ll notify contributors. We will then either:

• start the service again under different conditions, which we will explain to contributors

• transfer any remaining Repa funds to a different country where we operate the same service

• cancel the fund and return unused funds to contributors, less the processing and administrative fees involved in transferring the balance

In any case, we will explain our decision to contributors and give them an opportunity to speak to our team by video call. 

Where the possibility for a consumer to reuse a product or its packaging exists, this is generally better in terms of material usage and energy efficiency than recycling. However in southern Africa where we operate, reusable options for consumer products and packaging typically do not exist.