Waste for Life has two ongoing projects in Lesotho and Argentina. We have many collaborators in both countries, but the ultimate beneficiaries of our work are the cooperative members (from the Maseru Aloe Multipurpose Cooperative Union in Lesotho and the cartonero cooperatives in Argentina) who we have worked alongside since 2006.

Argentina

Carlos Levinton’s group, Centro Experimental de la Produccion (CEP), is taking the lead role in Argentina. They are working with the first prototype of the Kingston Hotpress and experimenting with different processes to make plastic composites from high and low density waste plastic that is supplied to them from some of the cartonero cooperatives. Students at the Rhode Island School of Design have been supporting our work since September 2009. They have built their own hotpress, have been able to integrate Waste for Life into their design curriculum, and have made impressive advances in product design, research, and development. Learn more about their participation here: http://risdwasteforlife.wordpress.com. Images of RISD’s design/development processes can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/46334730@N07/. We are building our own photo database here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wasteforlife/.

Lesotho

Thimothy Thamae has been coordinating the efforts in Lesotho from his base in Kingston, but will be returning to Lesotho in December to take up a professorship at the National University. Click here for his executive summary of our project with the Maseru Aloe Multi-Purpose Cooperative Union. Thimothy and Caroline’s work with this cooperative in the summer of 2006 was the antecedent of Waste for Life. Note: Thimothy is back in Lesotho and teaching at NUL. The project with the Maseru Aloe Multi-Purpose Cooperative Union has been fully funded by the United Nations Development Project, and is moving toward a summer 2010 implementation.

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