How we use donations
We use donor funding to directly support the collection and reprocessing of plastic waste through our Repa service.
We aim to be transparent about how your donation is being used. All donors can access a donor dashboard to track the volume of plastic waste that their support has helped collect, and to track payments to waste pickers.
Supporting waste collection
About 75% of your donation goes directly into our Repa 'social premium' fund. We use this to pay a higher price per kg of waste than the current market value. This gives waste pickers a fair price for the more complex work involved in collecting materials that are harder to recycle, such as LDPE (commonly used in thin plastic bags). This 'top up' payment varies depending on the material.
We do this to:
encourage collection of all types of waste
enable reprocessing of plastic waste that is often seen as too hard to collect
Helping us reach more communities
About 20% of your donation is used to help us trial and launch Repa in new regions. For example, we might use this to contribute to payments to local partners who are already experienced in managing waste collection and supporting waste pickers in a certain area. We've built Repa to be easily scalable across the global south, but we need to spend time understanding local markets and find reliable delivery partners. We might also need to pay for the technology that hosts our services to ensure that we can deliver the same high standard, no matter how many users we have.
We publish information about this work on social media and in our annual impact report.
Transaction fees
As with any organisation, we have to pay fees to service providers for processing donations and transferring payments. We regularly review the services we use to ensure we're getting value for money.
A small percentage (about 5-6%) of your donation goes to admin fees. This is normal for charities and NGOs who are processing donations digitally. These fees include:
Crowdfunding processing fees
We use Crowdfunder UK which currently charges 2.4% + 20p per pledge on UK/EU cards and 3.25% + 25p per pledge on non-EEA/UK transactions. We think Crowdfunder offers good value for money compared with other platforms and gives our supporters reassurance around the security of their data.
Bank charges
We need to transfer funds between Crowdfunder, our UK bank and the banks we use in the country where we deliver funds to waste pickers. There are small transaction and currency conversion fees which vary but are usually less than 4% of each pledge. We try to limit these as much as possible by combining transactions and avoiding international transfers where we can.
Mobile processing fees
Most waste pickers cannot access traditional bank accounts. In the countries we work in, mobile money is the preferred payment method for many waste pickers. We use mobile money to make instant payments to the waste pickers using their mobile account, which also makes payments easy to track.
Mobile money services, like M-Pesa, allow millions of people to access secure savings and payments service through their mobile provider. At present the rate charged by these providers ranges from 0% in some countries to 1.02% in others, but this may vary in future.
We also offer cash payments where the waste picker is new to our service and is still learning how it works, and record these transactions in the Repa app.
Transparency is core to what we do. If you'd like any more detail on how we use donations, please get in touch.