Our Response to COVID-19
When Uganda announced its first cases of COVID-19, we asked ourselves, “What can Takataka Plastics do to help our community?”
When we heard about the lack of PPE in hospitals, we temporarily transitioned from making construction materials to medical equipment, producing face shields for healthcare workers across northern Uganda. We are protecting the lives of frontline medical workers while creating jobs for at-risk youth.
Youth Employment
We brought together a team of enthusiastic youths who once lived and worked on the streets of Gulu and offered them jobs manufacturing face shields and other products from recycled plastics. We also provide the youth trauma counselling, life skills training, and access to savings groups to help them holistically transform their lives and become productive members of society.
Environmental Impact
We collect plastic waste and transform it into needed personal protective equipment (PPE).
Each face shield we produce saves 0.06 kg of plastic waste from ending up in landfills and water bodies or being burned and releasing harmful toxins and carcinogens.
For each kilogram of plastic we recycle, we save between 2.2 kg - 3.1 kg of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere, depending on the type of plastic.
Protecting Lives
A day after starting production of both our disposable and reusable face shields, a doctor from Gulu’s public hospital who read our story on social media called and asked us to donate to the hospital’s COVID-19 Isolation Ward because they had no face shields. That marked the beginning of donation of face shields to public health institutions across Uganda.
We’ve produced and distributed over 20,000 reusable face shields to health facilities and schools in 27 districts across Uganda. We continue to manufacture and donate face shields to protect our frontline workers.
