Photo: Jeffrey Moyo | IPS
They do not have a pension nor money from families or relatives, but plastic waste helps them support themselves. In Harare's Glenora high density suburb. Tabeth Gowere, 76, and Elizabeth Makufa, 81, are famous as collectors who make money selling products made from plastic waste, and younger people are learning from them. Michelle Gowere, 40, who learned from her mother-in-law, uses the money for food for her children's school lunch boxes. For many like Makufa, collecting plastic waste has also turned out to be therapeutic. "These things that we make with our own hands using plastic waste help us to rest from mental stress owing to problems we have these days that strain us psychologically." The Harare City Council is pleased that people are seeing that there is money in plastic waste, but notes that "the duty to take care of our surroundings is not a prerogative of the council, but ordinary people as well."
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