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Our Impact

Empowering Women Through Focus Group Discussions

Reclaimify conducted Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) at two collection centers in East and West Lombok with a focus on female workers at the collection centers. Our goal was to learn more about their daily challenges and how best we can support them. These women depend on waste sorting as their main source of income, and the discussions highlighted the real socioeconomic challenges they face every day, including:

  • Lack of personal protective equipment (PPE)
  • Low wages due to limited knowledge and sorting skills
  • High transportation costs and logistical difficulties reaching the centers
  • Lack of the right machinery to properly sort and clean materials
  • Limited access to education, healthcare, and financial services

Reclaimify responded directly to these needs by:

Providing full PPE sets for all workers in both centers (boots, aprons, and gloves)
Launching a forgivable loan program so centers could buy new equipment to sort and clean films
Sharing best practices in sorting techniques to close knowledge gaps and help workers earn more
Piloting a price support program to increase both collection rates and wages

Equipment Improvements for Cleaner Recycling

During our visits it became clear that only about 60% of collected low-value plastic materials could actually be recycled at the East Lombok collection center. We learned that the main issue was that the plastics were too dirty, and without the proper cleaning equipment, they could not be sold to recyclers. The owner knew this but lacked funds to purchase the necessary machinery.

To address this, Reclaimify provided direct support by:

Purchasing a new machine to wash plastics and improve quality
Repairing existing equipment so the center can handle higher volumes

As a result of these improvements, the center can now recycle significantly more material, reduce waste sent to landfills, and increase the value of collection efforts. The recyclability has increased by approximately 25% since the delivery of the machine.

Price Support & Fair Pay Program

Collecting low-value plastics, like films, comes with high costs and low market returns. To ensure collection remains viable, Reclaimify launched a price support program that provides an additional incentive per ton of plastic collected at west and east lombok.

Early results show this incentive is highly effective in supporting expanded collection and improving wages.

To strengthen operations further, Reclaimify also equipped collection centers with:

Ledger books
Laptops
Training for data collections

These tools make data more accessible and transparent, enabling centers to analyze operations, boost efficiency, and provide fair wages for the people involved in collective low-value plastics.