Its unbelievable that over 5000 single use plastic straws are used for 1 to 3 minutes in hotels, cafes and restaurants every month. In Uganda its estimated that over 600 tons of single use plastic are disposed off daily and 51% is left uncollected which endsup clogging in drainage channels of Kampala city leading to flooding causing disease outbreaks a report by the National Environment Management Authority published in New Visionthe Ugandan news paper of 2016.
Ouroots Africa was started was started in March 2016 by three people with the aim to tackle the challenge of plastic waste from the production side to have Africa freed from single plastic waste. People in Africa were using locally existing and naturally occurring materials until modernisation brought in plastic. Our focus is to go back to Ouroots Africa. We don’t have to manufacture all products, Just like we grow food, we can grow the products we use in our daily lives.
Ouroots Africa is a company focused on the production of reusable, 100 % biodegradable and 100% compostable alternatives to plastic products from naturally existing and grown plants one product at a time. We have started with straws The plant sticks are handcrafted into beautiful and safe drinking straws for hotels, restaurants and cafes.
We work with local women farmer groups to grow the plants. We support, train and empower the women groups to grow the plants on their farms using Eco-friendly farming techniques and then sell to us at a high profit margin. The beauty is that the plants take only 3-4 months to grow which gives the women a short harvest time and the possibility to generate revenues to support their families. In addition, we conduct community sensitisations events on creating awareness about the dangers, recycling and up-cycling of plastic waste, and the use of existing options to reduce the use of plastic based products. Our aim is to bring to the attention of everyone the dangers of plastics are putting on our world. We are fighting plastic pollution from the production side.
We carry out community awareness campaigns to help in making people aware of the dangers and impact of single use plastic and plastics in general in the communities and to the environment towards Climate change.
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