One Collective Recycling Center
The One Collective Recycling Center is an East London, South Africa based recycling business.
Revenue Earned
Earned through the processing and sale of plastic recyclate
Jobs created
We employ 10 people full-time who receive training and mentorship
Plastic recycled
Thousands of kilos saved from the natural environment and landfills
Business training
Employees and local entrepreneurs receive business coaching
The Business
The OCRC was founded by One Collective in December 2017. The business is based in East London South Africa and is a vehicle through which One Collective provides income for formerly unemployed youth, training for local entrepreneurs, and sustainable income for churches and non-profit organizations based in the surrounding townships.
The OCRC earns revenue through the recycling of discarded plastics that would otherwise end up in landfills or the natural environment. Daily operations include the collection of plastics through a combination of buy-back from those who collect in townships and the regional landfill, as well as donations from a proprietary citywide network of hundreds of residences and small businesses. The OCRC sorts these plastics by type and color and then compresses them into 150 kg bales. These bales are then sold to larger recyclers locally or in Johannesburg.
Our mission is to address the pressing social issues of high unemployment (& related crime & substance abuse among youth), lack of quality education & essential skills development, destitute economic poverty & chronic dependency, and environmental destruction.
The Team
scott worley
Began his career by spending two years in Eastern Zambia as a community health volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps, followed by six years in Eastern Cape, South Africa as a senior technical advisor with an international organization providing support for public HIV treatment and care programs.
In 2010, he founded Land of the Living, a ministry of God Adventure Church in East London, South Africa. The goal was to provide holistic support to churches and other community-based organizations and leaders as potential transformation agents in local impoverished townships and informal settlements. From this foundation Scott facilitates HOPE, a regional support network of more than 50 such leaders across 20 different communities. Land of the Living is now a registered Public Benefit Organization in South Africa, and the current owner of OCRC.
In 2016 Scott joined One Collective’s global leadership as the Community Development Strategist–providing training and strategic support to workers globally. He also serves as One Collectives South Africa Area Director.
Scott is passionate about seeing impoverished communities transformed by helping individuals grow in their God-given identities, utilizing local resources, and building upon what they are already proactively doing.
joshua Acheampong
Joshua is originally from Ghana, where he is formally qualified in the construction industry and ran his own associated business. He has lived in South Africa for the last decade and initially helped build and manage a large program called Work4All in East London, run by Sophumelela HIV Support Center and aimed at helping HIV-infected patients find work and develop skills to run their own businesses. Part of this included a glass recycling initiative, construction of small homes in township areas, gardening services, and various other trades – with his role being to facilitate training and support for the patients to master and create a livelihood in these trades.
Joshua then spent approximately three years in Graff Reinet (small city in the interior region of the Eastern Cape province), where he ran a local recycling business as well as developed a training & equipping company called Magnedor, leveraging his previous experiences with personal development and business skills training. From this platform he began working together with Scott Worley in 2016 to offer an entrepreneurial training & personal development course in East London through Land of the Living’s local community partner churches in HOPE network. Joshua trained & mentored approximately 50 unemployed people over the next two years.
Joshua and Scott’s partnership ultimately led to their development of OCRC which would serve as a platform for 1) training the unemployed and helping them create their own businesses in recycling, 2) generating revenue to drive the whole ETC program, and 3) positively impact the environment in severely neglected areas. Joshua currently focuses on managing operations for this enterprise, with plans to re-incorporate community-based group trainings as the business reaches an increasingly viable position.
Joshua’s greatest passion is taking unemployed people (often literally off the street), convincing them that they can improve their lives, helping them discover what they want to do in life, training and mentoring them to take the next steps, and using a tough love approach to challenge their mindsets and live with increasing purpose and responsibility through hard work.