Birch Tree, manufactured by Century Pacific Food Inc. (CNPF) has been helping uplift and empower local women micro-entrepreneurs to earn extra income during the pandemic through the Aling Tindera Waste-to-Cash program.
The initiative is done in partnership with Plastic Credit Exchange (PCX).
“When we initially partnered with PCX in 2019, our only goal then was to offset our entire plastic footprint for the year. We committed to offsetting 300,000kg of plastic waste. But as we continued to hear positive stories from those who have participated in the program, we can’t help but be glad of this program’s immediate positive financial impact,” said Greg Banzon, Chief Operating Officer, CNPF.
Aling Tindera is a waste-to-cash program where PCX incentivizes women-owned sari-sari stores to become collection points for post-consumer plastic waste. The participants are also provided with the necessary community infrastructure to aggregate, sort, and efficiently transport waste to partner processing facilities. Incentivizing residents to collect plastic waste also paves the way for cleaner environments and improved public health.
The Aling Tindera Waste-to-Cash program was created in response to the growing challenge of plastic waste ending up in nature. Its goal is to serve as an aggregation hub where any community member may sell post-consumer plastic by kilogram.
Since July 2020, Birch Tree has sponsored two Aling Tindera locations. “Birch Tree was one of the first brands to step up to become an Aling Tindera partner. Through the company’s sponsorship, we were able to fully equip our partner ‘Aling Tinderas’ with the tools they need to operate their collection point,” said a representative from PCX.
The ‘Aling Tinderas’ are women sari-sari store owners invited by the city governments to join the initiative. Through the program, each woman is provided with a purposefully designed 10-foot or 20-foot container, one manual baler to help manage the collected waste, one weighing scale, and starting capital.
Source: Malaya Business Insight
