In brief
In Zanzibar, a social enterprise founded by Dutch entrepreneur Anneloes Roelandschap collects discarded glass bottles from tourism and upcycles them into marketable products. The venture empowers local women like Mwanamkuu Mussa, a mother of four, by providing training, steady income, and opportunities to support her family’s education and health. Since 2012, Chako has prevented more than five million bottles from landfills and trained over 400 people, demonstrating the link between environmental stewardship and economic empowerment.
In the coastal island of Zanzibar, a woman named Mwanamkuu Mussa, 52, tells the story of how a discarded glass bottle has become a key to financial independence and a future home for her family. Mussa, a former nursery school teacher, joined the social enterprise Chako Zanzibar in 2021 after seeing the potential of upcycling tourism waste into useful products.
Chako Zanzibar, founded in 2012 by Dutch entrepreneur Anneloes Roelandschap and her partner, began after they opened a hotel in Stone Town in 2008 and noticed the waste generated by the growing tourism industry. They recognized that the benefits of tourism did not reach everyone equally, so they built an organization to collect waste from hotels and resorts, clean and process materials, and transform discarded glass bottles and plastic 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 announced. The enterprise offers local women, especially those whose livelihoods are limited by the region’s economic structure, practical skills, a source of income, and the chance to make decisions about their families’ futures.
Mussa now helps train new artisans, assists with bottle collection, and keeps the workshop organized. The income she earns is used to pay school fees, cover medical expenses, and fund a DVD library that supports her children’s education. She has also contributed to her children’s healthcare and plans to use future earnings to build a house for her family.
"Working at Chako has helped me become an independent woman," Mussa said. Her journey reflects the enterprise’s mission to address Zanzibar’s mounting waste from tourism and limited economic opportunities for parts of the local community, particularly women.
The Chako model demonstrates how environmental stewardship can coexist with economic empowerment, turning a source of pollution into a tool for community resilience and personal independence among Zanzibari women.
