In brief
On the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar, a social enterprise founded by Dutch entrepreneur Anneloes Roelandschap collects discarded glass and plastic from the tourism industry, upcycles them into marketable products and trains local women to gain new skills. Mwanamkuu Mussa, a mother of four, has used the income to fund her children’s education, set up a DVD library and dreams of building a home. The enterprise has prevented more than five million bottles from entering landfills and trained over 400 people since 2012.
In the sun‑baked coastal town of Nungwi, on the island of Zanzibar, a 52‑year‑old mother of four surveys stacks of cleaned glass bottles that she will turn into vases, drinking glasses and lamps.
Before joining the social enterprise Chako Zanzibar in 2021, Mwanamkuu Mussa taught at a local nursery school. The work at the workshop has opened a new livelihood that now supports her children’s school fees, health care and the opening of a DVD library for her neighborhood.
The work at Chako has helped me become an independent woman.
After the quotation, wholesale comments affirm Mussa’s claim. She trains new artisans, collects the bottles, and keeps the workshop organized.
The idea for Chako began when Dutch entrepreneur Anneloes Roelandschap and her partner saw how the booming tourism industry in Zanzibar was producing a steady stream of waste that the island could not manage.
After opening a hotel in Stone Town in 2008, the couple recognized that the benefits of the expanding industry did not reach everyone equally. In 2012, they founded Chako to collect waste from hotels and resorts, turn the material into new products and sell them back to the tourism sector.
Today the enterprise gathers glass bottles and plastic from hospitality businesses, cleans, processes and transforms the material into drinking glasses, vases, lamps and decorative items that tourists can buy as souvenirs.
Since its establishment, Chako has prevented more than five million bottles from ending up in Zanzibar’s landfills and has trained more than 400 local people, Roelandschap said.
Roelandschap’s comment, echoed earlier, points to the scale of the enterprise’s environmental and economic impact. The up‑cycled products find their way both into homes and in hotel gift shops, allowing visitors to take home a tangible reminder of Zanzibar while supporting local livelihoods.
For women such as Mussa, Chako offers a practical set of skills, a reliable source of income and the opportunity to shape the future of their families. Her next ambition is to build a house for herself and her children, a milestone she credits to the independence gained through her work at the workshop.
The social enterprise has grown to train more than 400 people, many of them women, and has built a network that connects the ecological goal of waste reduction with the tangible needs of the community.
Chako’s model demonstrates how a waste‑management problem can be transformed into an economic empowerment opportunity, illustrating the potential for similar initiatives on islands and in other regions where tourism thrives but meager local jobs persist.