A Peruvian child created a garbage bank. Money is exchanged for street garbage (photo)

Fifteen dollars to found a bank. This is the initial capital put on the table by a far-sighted boy who, fully embodying the spirit of theThe circular economy, has founded a real financial business around garbage recycling. José Adolfo Quisocala Condori, a Peruvian, was only 7 years old when, with the help of his parents and school, he started his small local bank. He's now 13, and the account holders following José in this adventure have grown from 20 to 2.000. And they continue to grow.

The garbage bank works like this: it pays young people, sometimes very poor, to deliver the collected garbage everywhere, and it enters into commercial agreements with Peruvian waste recycling companies. It's very simple, and very effective, also to avoid wasting the lives of young people who risk being sucked into the vortex of poverty and illegality.

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MAKING MONEY FROM WASTE

José lives in Arequipa, Peru's second most populous city after Lima. A metropolis that's certainly not wealthy, with extreme inequality, and whose economy relies primarily on tourism. Little José grows up watching his peers, from extremely poor neighborhoods and families, arrive at class on an empty stomach or resort to a thousand tricks to scrape together a few pennies. Schoolmates stationed at traffic lights begging, or behind stalls selling candy. Necessity is the mother of invention, and so the Barselana Student Cooperative Bank, in an attempt to allow Arequipa's young residents to receive money in exchange for waste, which is abundant in the Peruvian city's trash bins and elsewhere. Garbage, with the city at the forefront  the usual plastic and the usual paper.

WASTE BANK

The mechanism José created is very simple: boys and girls come to him, bringing the waste they find at home or on the go to his bank, and receive a cash reward. Like a seasoned banker, the boy records the credits and accumulates them in actual bank accounts, where he credits the proceeds from the sale of the garbage. Only they can access the bank accounts opened at the Cooperative Bank., the children who own the title, and not the parents. The first deposit that José asks for to open the account at the waste bank is a bag with six kilograms of recyclable waste, especially plastic, paper and packaging, the equivalent of 30 cents.

The money the young Peruvian uses to pay his account holders comes from agreements with waste recycling companies: businesses that pay significantly more than the normal market price for recyclable waste. Charity? Not exactly, as José's bank has created a virtuous circle, a circular economy, with a spin-off that has significantly increased the waste recovery business.

TO KNOW MORE: Waste recycling: A woman buys trash at a Rome market. Those who sell it earn money for used oil and plastic bottles. Or they donate to charity (photo).

WASTE BANK PERU

The Banco Cooperativo del Estudiante Barselana is not limited to being just a “bank”, it is a comprehensive project aimed at young people and very young people, to whom José offers the possibility of putting together a nest egg and also free courses in financial, entrepreneurial and life education.  environmental managementAll precious materials for creating savings and, above all, jobs.

An ambitious goal to overcome the difficulties of a challenging country from the bottom up, so much so that José Adolfo, with enviable clarity and equal determination, has set himself the goal, through the Bank, of reducing poverty in his country by promoting a culture of savings, entrepreneurship, and the circular economy. Cornerstones of a truly sustainable world.

(Featured image accompanying the text taken from the Facebook page of Barselana Student Cooperative Bank)

WASTE AS A RESOURCE:

• Eco-friendly jogging: French doctor Lemonnier invented a running therapy that involves collecting waste (photo)
• From plastic to fuel: a machine produces diesel by burning packaging (video)
• From garbage cans to car fuel tanks: a Gela plant transforms waste into biofuel.
• Palermo's first recycling center opens: those who take their waste to the collection center receive bus tickets in exchange (video)
• Plastic cups and bottles in exchange for a bus ticket. In Indonesia, people are recycling waste on public transport (photos and video).