Support Litter4Tokens in empowering South Africans!
1,500,000
Litter4tokens (L4T) was set up by Clare Swithenbank-Bowman in December 2015 to tackle the dual challenge of litter and unemployment in a North Coast community in South Africa. L4T provides South African people with the opportunity to earn tokens in exchange for collecting recyclable and non-recyclable waste, simultaneously preventing thousands of tons of waste reaching the oceans and landfill as well as decreasing C02 levels, cleaning up communities, empowering and providing an income to people living in poverty.
Picture Mr Ndlovo; 54 years old with no employment and hasn’t earned a salary for over 5 years and has 4 children to feed. He heard about the Litter4tokens campaign in 2015 and started picking up a bag of plastic, paper, glass and tin and collecting his tokens. He is now feeding himself and his family with 4 children and his grandma. He earns R1200 a month by collecting 240 bags of litter (recycling) from the river banks and communities.
This is life changing, and needed to help the underfunded poorer communities. We all share the same ocean and the effects of dumping in any country affects the world. The cost of NOT doing something is worse than doing nothing.
Picture Mr Ndlovo; 54 years old with no employment and hasn’t earned a salary for over 5 years and has 4 children to feed. He heard about the Litter4tokens campaign in 2015 and started picking up a bag of plastic, paper, glass and tin and collecting his tokens. He is now feeding himself and his family with 4 children and his grandma. He earns R1200 a month by collecting 240 bags of litter (recycling) from the river banks and communities.
This is life changing, and needed to help the underfunded poorer communities. We all share the same ocean and the effects of dumping in any country affects the world. The cost of NOT doing something is worse than doing nothing.
Charity
Litter4Tokens
Who we are
We are a registered non profit aiming to instil pride and cleanliness by putting respect back into the communities, and encouraging hard work whilst employing and educating the nation. To fund our Token shops across South Africa. We provide an opportunity for anyone to collect bags of rubbish in exchange for tokens that can be used in L4T kiosks. 1 bag = 1 token = R5. We prevent trash/litter from reaching the environment in the first place as it has a value, we educate, employ and don’t give hand outs but empower.
Purpose
Our mission is to establish zero waste L4T Kiosk businesses across the world that increase enterprise development and entrepreneurship within low-income communities while reducing the ocean bound and riverway waste through the exchange of 1 million bags for 1 million L4T tokens per year by 2025 in each country of operation.
Origins
We launched in 2015 in South Africa as we saw huge poverty, no jobs and corruption including no infrastructure so litter/trash filling up rivers and then our ocean we all share. Tokens are issued for a bag of sorted trash/litter, no burning, no landfill as separate at source. People exchange their tokens for food at different L4T locations across South Africa.
Every year worldwide, more than 300 million tons of plastic are produced and each year at least 10 million tons end up in our oceans. The damage caused by plastics to the ocean ecology and wider environment has been well documented. Our goal is to stop this waste entering the ocean. Many people within the communities that L4T works with are living in poverty and unable to feed and clothe their families due to extremely high rates of unemployment. The recycling and waste collection services in these communities are also frequently lacking.
