Recycle Not a Waste Initiative is an innovative social enterprise that trains and employs street youth from disadvantaged communities in Ghana to clear their streets of plastic and other material waste creating serious environmental havoc in our cities and uses the creative talents of Ghanaian artisans to have fused it with innovations, creativity and modern design sensibilities and up cycle them into high-end designer handmade products such as bags, wallets, shoes, furniture, home décor, shirts that are ethical and eco-friendly.
Ghana is a country overflowing with abundant creative talents, hardworking people, design aesthetics and artisan skills yet millions of people in the country live below the poverty line whiles most artisans are unemployed or underemployed as a result of lack of opportunities that will make use of their talents.
Recycle Not a Waste seeks to bring together these talented artisans and street youth add value to their skills, create sustainable fair employment for them and pay them a fair wage to break the cycle of poverty and the needed empowerment to address other local challenges RECNOWA commits to running its operations in a sustainable way at all level of its operations and in line with the UN Global Compact principles.
RECNOWA operates and trades on these principles:
Ethical Consumerism: We are committed to excellent design and the production of high quality eco-friendly and ethical designer fashion goods from recycled materials to the international fair trade markets. At RECNOWA,a product is only considered successful if it is competitively and beautifully designed, creates a job, bring in trade not aid and mindful of the environment. We define success by how well our social enterprise respond to the needs of the environment and those of our cherished customers, the environmental benefits of our products are not just that they are made from plastic and other material waste creating environmental havoc in the streets of our cities, all our handmade products are appealing, unique and most of all ecological.
Social Entrepreneurship and Poverty Alleviation: Building the capacity of artisans and street youth to lift them out of poverty and connecting them to the sales opportunities in the international fair trade markets, guaranteeing them a sustainable source of income and wealth brought by the international export market access.
Fair Trade: Fair Trade is most commonly defined as being a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency and respect that seek greater equity in international trade. It contributes to sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers – especially in developing countries. Fair Trade Organizations, backed by consumers, are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade. RECNOWA embraces these principles and has integrated them into every part of its operations. We focus our marketing on this sector in the hope that it will continue to succeed and show that a better way of doing business is possible.
Carbon Zero: Carbon Offsetting is the practice of reducing emissions through a carbon-saving project in order to balance out emissions from a given source. For example, through calculating the carbon dioxide emissions of a car journey or an office, it is possible to ‘offset’ them by investing in a project that saves an equivalent amount of carbon such that the impact of the organisation is net zero.
Carbon Offsetting works by investing funds to absorb or prevent the emission of a tonnage of CO2 equivalent to the client’s unavoidable greenhouse gas emissions. This is done by investing in projects that save energy emissions efficiency-based offsets or that absorb atmospheric CO2 forestry-based offsets.
RECNOWA seeks to contributes to the fight against global warming and climate change one of the biggest issues currently facing humanity and our planet by positioning our cutting-edge fair trade operations as a totally carbon zero fashion social enterprise.