3 minute read
GOOD CITYZENS
CityZen aims to help communities to convert waste into financial opportunities by activities such as picking up litter on the streets, upcycling clothes and turning organic waste into compost. Co-founder Najen Naidoo tells us about the organisation
CITYZEN is a community organisation and registered NPO, striving to create cleaner, greener and safer cities for ourselves and our families.
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We started the organisation in Rivonia, in Johannesburg, in 2018 and we are now expanding to other suburbs. The aim was to build actively engaged communities looking to reduce crime through the creation of employment, while uplifting their neighbourhoods.
As part of our commitment to climate change, CityZen’s focus is to ensure that as much waste as possible is converted into financial opportunities.
To this end, our latest project involves upcycling clothes, sorting general waste and minimising what goes to landfill by turning food waste into compost.
Our clothing recycling initiative takes donated clothes out of the “new” economy giving them a second wearing. Working with Rotary Morningside and Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, clothes are donated, sorted and repaired by unemployed women from the inner city of Jozi, who select what they would like to resell. Proceeds go towards income for the women, as well as expanding the programme and providing business education and other skills.
PICTURES SUPPLIED, VICTOR / UNSPLASH
Co-founders of CityZen Najen Naidoo and the late Daniel Hunt. ABOVE: People work at Braamfonteinspruit in Joburg. CityZen helps to keep rivers and green spaces clean. Vendor and street kitchen waste builds up rapidly and cleaning up twice a week, and supplying vendors and kitchens with bags, helps to keep greenbelts usable for residents.
The CityZen crew covers about 25km of road a day picking litter off the streets.
CityZen’s waste management project hauls about 20 tons of waste off the streets of Sandton a week. Our team sorts the waste to create additional income. We sort waste within the communities we operate in and convert this into more revenue-generating opportunities through collaboration with our recycling partners.
Once we have minimised our impact on the landfill we are hoping to get corporate support and extend our facilities to all reclaimers to provide a safe space to process the recycling.
We also dispose of a huge amount of organic waste each day from vendors, street kitchens and the surroundings.
Our next goal is to turn this waste into compost to be used at our experimental community farms to help the homeless learn how to feed themselves and expand their gardening skills. Excess compost will be used in community gardens or sold into the community as extra income for the beneficiaries.
FIVE TIPS TO TACKLE CLIMATE CHANGE IN YOUR COMMUNITY
1 Sort your waste. It’s valuable and helps to create jobs.Try to formalise a working relationship with your local organisations, like CityZen.
2 Stop donating to beggars. We’re unintentionally approving of their begging and robbing them of an opportunity to earn a dignified living.
3 Get together with your community and pay people to help clean the neighbourhood.
4 Most people just want to make an honest living but don’t know where to start. We work with street vendors, pay them a weekly incentive and supply them with equipment.
5 Create an inclusive community. We are all Africans at the end of the day trying to make our way in the world. Work together to come up with mutually beneficial solutions to everyday problems.
