Ghetto Research Lab - turning waste into gold, and more!

Compost toilets, fish-farming linked to aquaponically grown plants, buildings made from plastic bottles, pavers made from recycled plastic bags, vegetables grown in sacks, and a team of young people all willing to sift through the rubbish of others to achieve all this, as they very much see ‘one person’s rubbish as another person’s gold’.

Today I had the joy of visiting the highly inspirational ‘Ghetto Research Laboratory’, which has been set up by social entrepreneur cum climate change warrior Ticha, in the ghetto area on Kamwokya in Kampala, home to 20,000 people living in various levels of poverty. 

Ticha is in his late 20’s and on graduating from university as a history teacher he failed to get a job so moved back home with his family in Kamwokya. Looking for something to fill his days, he was really bothered by the amount of waste and disease in the community as well as high levels of crime due to a generation of young people who felt ignored, hopeless and trapped into a cycle of poverty.

Ticha was compelled to do something about all these things – to find ways to reduce the waste, create employment, build self-esteem, and engage with the young people. And so the Ghetto Research Lab (GRL) was born.

Today, as he and two of his colleagues showed myself and John round, we got to hear more about the impact that all the projects are making. Women who are now earning enough to put their children through school, thanks to their jobs creating eco-bricks by stuffing plastic waste into plastic bottles. Lads who were living lives of petty crime now building homes and toilet blocks with the eco-bricks. Groups of 500 people who used to have no community toilet anywhere near, so were succumbing to ‘flying toilets’ rather than walking long distances, now able to access good quality toilets nearby. Young people who are learning how to grow vegetables in sacks, and how to farm fish, and the science behind aquaponics and how that can link with recycling the water for the fish tanks. 

We saw a compost loo and the different stages of processing the waste through to getting really top quality compost to help with growing the veg. We saw the pavers that are made from thousands of bits of waste plastic which they melt and mould. We visited all the different aspects of their urban farming. We went inside the house and the toilet block each of which is constructed using about 25,000 eco-bricks each (that is 25,000 bottles not going into landfill or the water systems per building). It was just so inspiring. I came away with so much to think about.

In these days with so much talk about climate change, and moving away from single-use plastic, this was a beautiful project to behold. Set in the heart of an urban slum, with no guaranteed income except for the bits and bobs of money they make through doing jobs for others, or welcoming a local school who want to educate their children – these are a team of people who are pursuing their goal of improving their local environment and community.

The local people are watching and learning and putting the lessons into practice. The wider community is slowly finding out about what is going on. The young people are starting to have a positive purpose and believe in themselves. There is so much here that others can learn, so many examples of how to start with what you have and just get going. 

Yes we are at the stage where we need governments to make big differences as well, but today Ticha and co reminded me that its also about communities coming together and making small but meaningful differences, as we all take on our share of the responsibility to improve this beautiful but fragile world in which we live.