Communities recycling their environment — and lives

It took a man from Sweden to show us that the rubbish in front of our eyes had the potential to change and improve people’s lives.

I got to know this Swede through a common friend, and he contacted me in the middle of 2023 and told me he wanted to visit our church in Jacksonville in Gqeberha’s northern areas.

In the months preceding his visit, he told me the Lord had inspired him to use his knowledge and experience in recycling to improve people’s lives.

He has more than 20 years of experience in recycling in Sweden and wanted to use this knowledge to do something for the Lord.

We started to talk about recycling and the opportunities and benefits it holds for the less fortunate communities we serve.

He visited us in November and we set the proverbial recycling ball in motion.

The magnitude of this project and its potential to improve and clean communities only truly struck me after meeting various recycling companies in Gqeberha.

It was then decided that the church was the ideal vehicle to use, not only in initiating this project, but also to educate the surrounding communities about taking responsibility for their environment.

We also decided to partner with two companies for logistical and educational purposes, namely Waste Trade Recycling and Sustainable Seas Trust.

Our focus would be Jacksonville and Timothy Valley, two previously disadvantaged suburbs in the far northern areas of Gqeberha where illegal dumping of rubbish and litter is a huge problem.

Our starting point would be using the church members to do a “cleanup day” in these two communities as part of an awareness campaign.

This day became a reality on Saturday, March 16. What amazing lessons we learnt on that day.

We had about 150 people join us for the cleanup and amazingly almost a quarter of them were not members of the church, but were from the community.

The church building and the church members would be prepared to be examples of responsible recycling.

The church would also become a collection point for recyclables while educating members of the church and community.

The excitement in the community about cleaning their environment was encouraging.

We realised that small communities were able and willing to take the responsibility of cleaning their areas and keeping them clean if small incentives were made available.

Some of them even said they would love to see these ugly dumping areas being transformed either into sports fields or beautiful parks or gardens. The greatest potential was clearly shown in the amount of interest from the youth, and we needed to develop a plan to harness this for greater opportunities for them.

This plan would include an “Adopt-a-spot” programme encouraging community members to clean their surroundings and keep it clean, while receiving support from the church.

The sad thing about the day was that we collected more than 400 bags of recyclable and non-recyclable rubbish in just more than an hour, and yet the areas showed almost no visible change or improvement.

The size of this problem became clear to us as we realised that there were layers and layers of rubbish dumping to be cleared before we could make any significant impact.

The soil pollution and its negative effects on plant and animal life were evident.

Of course, the question we all asked was could we really make a difference when facing such a huge challenge.

Again, the positive response of the community members came to our rescue.

Their enthusiasm in the face of such degradation really encouraged us not to give up but to forge ahead with our plan to clean and keep clean.

These people would most probably not have taken up this challenge if the church had not initiated it.

The years of trust that the church has built up in the community through various community services and projects was the main factor that caused people to believe it could work.

Our main goal is not recycling or cleaning the environment, but the cleaning of people’s lives and homes.

Recycling is only a means to reaching a person and “recycling” their lives.

The Lord Jesus is most probably the best “recycler” of lives, taking rubbish out and making something beautiful.