GarbageMan: Upcycling Plastic Waste With Rohingya Refugees

In Jamtoli campsite within the Kutupalong-Cox's Bazar refugee settlement — home to over 860,000 Rohingya refugees from Myanmar — Bangladeshi social enterprise GarbageMan supplies upcycling expertise while Cordaid/ICCO manages training and the World Food Programme pays refugee workers for the labour. Around 500 Rohingya refugees, prioritising elderly women and people with disabilities, sort, clean and process plastic waste and single-use food sachets into rucksacks, laptop pouches, bracelets, bins and wallets. Since September 2020 the initiative has transformed over half a million food packets, and it won both a WFP Innovation Award and the Bangladesh Innovation Award.