This person is fighting plastic waste in a unique way

He's setting new benchmarks for upcycling

Apr 28, 2023

Gary Bencheghib calls himself a full-time riverman in his Instagram profile.

For the past few years, he has been working actively to spread awareness and solve the problem of plastic waste in Bali, Indonesia.

He started a movement called "Sungai Watch" to clean up clogged rivers, littered beaches, and illegal trash dumping sites around Bali and Java over the past two years to stop trash from going into the ocean.

As part of this initiative, he also built a 12-square-meter tiny house constructed from 35,000 plastic bags sourced from Bali's polluted rivers.

The interior and furniture in the house, such as bedframe and kitchen cabinets, were also fully made of plastic cups and straws waste, Bencheghib said.

Moving onto this week’s content. So today, we have👇🏽

A startup that’s making clothing alterations and repairs convenient
Another startup that’s greening up the concrete industry
Some good news
Can I help you?

🧵This app makes clothing alterations and repairs as easy as ordering food

It’s not working…What do you do when your clothes get damaged? Throw them in the clothing recycling bin or probably give them to a charity or donate it somewhere else. While all these are noble choices, they don’t work all the time. Most of these clothes would still end up in landfills and sit there for centuries.

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Revive…The best way to tackle this would be to increase the life of the clothes. Sojo is trying to solve this problem and make fashion more circular and sustainable. It makes clothing alterations & repairs easy & hassle-free.

The app connects the user to local seamster or tailoring businesses and delivers the items to be altered or repaired.
The repairs are done in 3-5 days and are delivered back to the customer at their doorstep.
The pickup and delivery are done via a bicycle- a greener option.

Fixed by Sojo…It also works with brands directly, allowing their customers to avail repair and alteration. This helps to keep the clothes out of landfills.

Check out Sojo

🏗️This startup is greening up the concrete industry

Climate impact…The concrete industry is responsible for ~8% of CO2 emissions. It is one of the highest greenhouse gas emitters. Most of it comes from cement which is the binding material used in concrete. With rising urbanization, this %age could go up.

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Concrete revolution…Finnish startup Carbonaide wants to tackle that by producing carbon-negative concrete- one that absorbs more carbon than it emits. It’s mission is to turn concrete from a large emission source into a carbon sink. With its technology, the concrete manufacturer can use other binders(with lower carbon footprint)

This reduces cement consumption and brings down carbon emissions.
It also takes CO2 in the ecosystem and binds it into concrete. This CO2 remains captured in the building and stays out of the atmosphere
When fully operational, it can capture up to 5 tons of CO2 per day.

Carbon-Binding Goal…Carbonaide wants to have 100 units of the production device installed globally by 2030. This would bind ~500 megatons of carbon dioxide annually by 2050, which corresponds to 10–20% of the concrete market.

Check out Carbonaide