Chad Robertson and Nkazimlo Miti - Regenize

Social entrepreneurs Chad Robertson and Nkazimlo Miti, founders of Regenize, came up with the idea for creating a free recycling service that incentivises recycling by exchanging it with a virtual currency called Remali.

Remali can be used to buy groceries and airtime. Regenize also partners with waste pickers to collect recyclables from households and provides them with uniforms, transport and mobile devices.

In 2018, Regenize applied to the SAB Foundation’s Student Seed Fund and they were awarded R100 000. With the funding, they were able to run a pilot, which then allowed them to validate assumptions and to raise more money to grow the pilot. With the seed fund acting as a pipeline for the main Social Innovation Awards Programme, Regenize was then awarded R1.3 million at the 2019 Social Innovation and Disability Empowerment Awards.

With the award grant, Regenize plans to expand its services to more communities, providing recycling services to further households in Cape Town, as well as creating better working conditions for their waste pickers. The funds will allow them to employ a full team to assist in the management of the business.

They have implemented their services in various communities in Cape Town and currently provide recycling services to over 22 000 households. They have also partnered with 40 waste pickers, employ 10 people and have an annual turnover of just over R212 000. In the next year or two, Regenize plans to grow their business and expand their offering to other cities and communities in Cape Town.

The SAB Foundation journey has been busy. After the Social Innovation Awards ceremony we got a lot of attention from media and we even have people wanting to franchise our model or enter into partnership. It is still too early to agree to anything right now, but it is something we can look into in future.

Chad Robertson, Co-founder of Regenize.