VIPRO is a Congolese company registered in the DRC. It designs and runs a programme that cleans up cities, starting with Kinshasa. Its principle fits in one sentence: every piece of waste must find a channel, from the bag left by the front door to the material that comes back into the city.
Four steps, one chain
- Collect: drop-off points near homes, and collectors on tricycles and motorbikes who go through the alleys no truck can enter.
- Sort: three coloured bins, organic, plastic, other. At the sorting centre, each material is weighed and then sent to its channel.
- Transform: plastic, metal and glass are sold to recyclers. The rest is dried and becomes a solid fuel.
- Energy and materials: this fuel feeds a power plant, and the residues become pavers, bricks and street furniture.
Why start with Kinshasa
The capital has more than 17 million people and produces about 12,000 tonnes of waste every day, almost 98% of which is burned or dumped in the open, according to the World Bank. A channel is missing: nearby drop-off points, paid collectors, a plant at the end of the chain.
Every piece of waste must find a channel.
Commune by commune
The programme moves commune by commune, with the people already working on the ground: collectors, neighbourhood associations, recyclers. The pilot will run in one commune first. Once the programme works in Kinshasa, it will be repeated elsewhere in the DRC, then in Africa.
The programme's figures will be published here once they are validated, with their source. The four steps are detailed on the programme page.
