A Canadian builds a factory in Rocinha to turn plastic caps into skateboards | Business

The project took shape in the community last year, in April, near the Red Door entrance, as Na Laje Designs (@nalajedesigns), where the Canadian’s factory works. To date, Rayegani’s initiative has ensured that approximately 700 kilos of bottle caps are not improperly discarded.

According to a survey by the project, more than 230 tons of waste, ranging from plastic, cardboard, polystyrene and others, are thrown away every day in Rocinha. This number made the community a perfect place to implement the initiative, according to the engineer:

— I always wanted to play projects like this, and I always wanted it to be in Brazil, where I had been coming since 2014, as a tourist, and I was delighted. The idea of ​​coming to the community came from the suggestions of those who were already working here with similar initiatives. With high waste disposal, Rocinha has become a good place. In addition to being a place devoid of basic sanitation, with little structure for sustainable projects.

He says the trigger to start making the skateboards came in the kitchen of his home in Toronto, while he was handling the garbage produced by his family:

— I wanted to find a new destination for all this amount of waste, something focused on recycling.

After research, the most viable was to produce the skateboard. Today, the project is supported by NGOs such as Salvemos São Conrado, Vivendo Um Sonho Surf, Horta na Favela and Família na Mesa, all active in the Rocinha region.

To make one unit, he uses about 500 corks, which is equivalent to one kilo of plastic. The material comes from community residents, nearby fishermen and social projects involved in the production and distribution of food.

Cooking lasts about two hours, between grinding, pressing and then in the oven. Today, with strong demand from businesses, Rayegani has hired two employees to help with the work. Each skateboard costs R$480 with the wheels. Without them, it’s R$ 260.

— I still don’t have the financial return I invested, which was almost R$50,000, for the creation of Na Laje. Demand is high, but we still can’t meet everyone. Our team is small for the number of orders. We are moving slowly,” explains the engineer.

The space is about the size of a three by three meter room. The idea is that he succeeds in expanding the factory so that it becomes a space for sustainable stories: with an ecological garden, promoted by Horta na Favela, another project in the region; a space for workshops; and a larger factory, so visitors can also be part of the manufacturing:

— We estimate something around R$100,000 for the expansion. We want it to become a place for tourists and locals.

Another idea is that the reused waste exceeds the ceilings. So far with them he has already made trophies for local championships and risked a wall clock. The next step is to reuse the fishing nets, starting this year. According to the engineer, the material is much stronger than PET.

— In ten years, we want to be in other places in Brazil. We noticed this request. It’s hard to think of the project as something that pays off so financially, even because the production is very expensive, but I mostly think of educating people here and abroad,” he says.

Marcelo Farias, a Salvemos São Conrado project activist and community resident for 45 years, sees a bright future with this and other projects in Rocinha. Since mid-2011, the project has been organizing clean-up actions on São Conrado beach. According to Farias, more than five tons of waste have already been removed in a single day of joint efforts:

“One of our biggest problems here is waste. Many do not have access to the recycle bin; live on top of the hill and dispose of it incorrectly. The investment is low. When projects like these come to the area, I feel people become more aware. It puts in people’s minds that waste can be reused and even disposed of in a different way, without being in the middle of the street or in the seas, as seen in large quantities.