Zelaki Recycling Project

Hi everyone! We are Engineers Without Borders- Team Ethiopia. We have been working for the past four years to design and build a small-scale recycling pipeline that will turn plastic bottles discarded in the Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia, into profit for local communities. We are asking for your help to get us to Ethiopia for the first time this summer to build recycling machines with engineering students at the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology using locally sourced materials. Your donations will be used to cover the total costs of the final build, including travel costs not covered by scholarships and grants.

Our story

Four years ago, a biologist from Arizona State University came to us with a problem. Dr. India Schneider-Crease had been studying gelada monkeys in the Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia, for a decade, and she and her colleagues were troubled by the amount of discarded plastic accumulating in the park. People living around the park had asked her research team to help find a solution that would protect the park’s endangered flora and fauna while providing community benefits. India found us at Engineers Without Borders and we began planning a solution. Since then, we’ve met with the local community, established a collaboration with the Addis Ababa University Institute of Technology, and talked to entrepreneurs working to recycle plastics. Ultimately, we developed prototypes to shred, dry, and inject plastic, to create a circular economy where plastic waste can be turned into beautiful products to be sold into the local and tourist markets for community profit.

Anything else you should know

We are committed to this project as a long-term partnership between us, the team at the Addis Ababa Institute of Technology, and Debark University (where the final workshop will be installed and operated). We anticipate working together over the next 5+ years to help grow and expand the capacities of the workshop. Once the workshop is in operation, all revenue from selling the plastic products to local communities will cover staff and maintenance costs, and all revenue that community members get from selling those products stays with them.

For more pictures, information, and progress updates, please visit our website.

https://zelaki.pages.dev/plastic