The Challenge is designed to help multinational consumer goods companise find inventive solutions and innovative approaches towards the development of new circular business models for plastic reuse and refill. 

With her idea for refillable detergent packaging set to revolutionise plastic waste management in rural communities, Rapetswa will now receive £25,000 in milestone-based seed funding, along with training and mentorship, to help develop her solution.

Despite growing calls for sustainable consumption, only 3% of rural households in South Africa actively recycle their waste, with many instead resorting to the practice of refuse burning. Yet, this comes as South Africa also has a weak and strained waste management system, with 35% of households not receiving weekly waste collection and a further 29% of households not having any waste collected at all.

To address this issue and help the world-leading manufacturer of household goods reduce its plastic usage by 100,000 tonnes, Unilever partnered with Global Alliance Africa to host an Innovation Exchange Challenge, which sought to explore how reuse and refill packaging could be adopted to reduce the amount of waste produced by households in rural communities.

Businesses, organisations, and individuals from across South Africa were invited to submit proposals, with the challenge generating a number of responses. After much deliberation by a team of industry and environmental experts, Sharon Rapetswa, the founder of Triple Shine Detergent Solutions, was selected as the winner. 

Founded in 2016, the company has developed a new line of refillable plastic packaging for Unilever’s bleach, detergent, and fabric softener products.

The idea, says Rapetswa, came about during her research into waste management practices in rural communities: “Across the country, the same line of plastic products was being disposed of by rural households on a monthly basis. But due to the lack of proper waste management services, recycling was an unavailable option. I realised that, to help these communities consume more sustainably, we needed to tap into the existing reuse and refill culture that has been practiced for years.”

By winning the challenge, Rapetswa will now receive £25,000 in milestone-based seed funding, along with training and mentorship, to help develop her solution.

“As a global company leading the way in creating a cleaner future, we are very keen to do all we can to reduce single use plastic in South Africa and we’re excited to be working with Sharon to develop her ideas and create sustainable solutions for our home care products that can build up local businesses based in some of the country’s most vulnerable communities,” adds Judisha Naidoo, Homecare R&D Director for Unilever.

Commenting on the significance of this Innovation Exchange Challenge, Marisa Naidoo, Knowledge Transfer Manager South Africa at Global Alliance Africa at Global Alliance Africa, concludes: “A large part of our mission is to connect change-makers at all levels of industry and society, so that we can co-create inclusive solutions to a sustainable future. To that end, we’re incredibly grateful for the opportunity to partner with Unilever, to help them take an active role in transforming the future of the consumer goods industry.”

According to the Rose Review 2022 report, more women than ever are starting new businesses.

Over 140,000 all-female-founded companies were created last year, and this figure is growing by over a third each year.

South Africa moved up two places on the Women Business Owner benchmark to rank forty-fourth, with 21.9% of all businesses owned by women in 2021 versus 21.1% in 20202.

Women in innovation have continuously shown unwavering potential despite the sociocultural challenges that they’re faced with.

These have had an impact on the opportunities available to them within the innovation space. Women account for 30% of Sub-Saharan Africa’s researchers and innovators and face limited access to funding and skills gaps that are key to business enterprises’ formation, scale-up, and sustainability.

Global Alliance Africa’s Knowledge Transfer Manager for South Africa, Marisa Naidoo, who plays a key role in supporting women in innovation says: “There is a gender bias that women have to be up against. Historically, they were not provided with certain opportunities, and as the world is changing, these opportunities are becoming bigger. Often enough, we do not focus on a woman’s lifestyle, about how we train them for business, we expect them to fall within what’s already created.”

Naidoo, who has 8-10 years of experience in advocating for support for women in innovation adds: “The innovation chain needs to put more emphasis on the support for women, to enable inclusivity and to show them that they belong in innovation. Women have a natural ability to be community leaders, and champion innovation and change in communities”.

To actively create this inclusivity, Global Alliance Africa has designed the Place-Based Innovation (PBI) programme, which focuses on developing innovators and entrepreneurs, specifically women and youth, from their early development to commercialisation. In addition to Place-Based innovation, the Innovation Exchange programme utilises current ecosystem players to ensure that women are being supported.

“Often enough, programmes that are done in isolation, lack successive steps. When we create our programmes we focus on ensuring that we guide women and youth from the early stages of the innovation journey, right through until they commercialise. In other initiatives, such as Open Innovation, we have included things such as pitch training and mentorship support- which is our effort of enabling inclusivity for those innovators that have not had any training.”

These programmes have contributed to the success of women such as Sharon Rapetswa, who is the founder of Triple Shine Detergent Solution, a female-owned, and run business that uses an environmentally friendly and innovative approaches to empowering village or township entrepreneurs (youth and women) to establish micro-enterprises distributing refill cleaning detergents.  Through the Innovation Exchange programme, Unilever selected the initiative to develop a new line of refillable plastic packaging for Unilever’s bleach, detergent, and fabric softener products. In addition, the Gauteng-based PBI intervention works with female ecosystem representatives such as Makhosazane Luthuli from Allegro Enterprises to identify barriers and find solutions to investment in innovation.

Adding to the need for funding for women in innovation, Luthuli says: “Women in tech and innovation tend to be over-mentored and under-funded. It’s easy for them to join an incubation or acceleration programme. It is harder for women to raise capital to develop their innovations and create commercially viable enterprises. In order to close the gender inequality gap, we need to adopt practical and sustainable financial solutions that break the economic barriers and promote financial inclusion; we need to bet on women.”

“With women’s successes in innovation over the years, I would encourage them to stand up and be a voice. When women in innovation are the only ones in a room filled with men, they tend to lower themselves and be quiet. I encourage women to be the voice for other women in innovation because women also belong in innovation,” concludes Naidoo.

But in South Africa – where the total cost of  plastic waste pollution exceeds R885 billion annually – the search is on for new and innovative approaches to minimising how the material is used in online retail, and limit its subsequent impact on the environment, livelihoods, and public health.

Leading the charge is Unilever and Global Alliance Africa, who have partnered to bring about a refill-reuse revolution in South African plastic waste management. To this end, the pair have launched an Innovation Exchange Challenge and are calling on innovators to submit their out-of-the-box ideas and business models with the potential to reshape how plastic is used in online retail. 

Benefits

• Successful applicants will receive up to £25,000 in seed funding and work alongside the multinational consumer goods company to develop their solution
• In addition to milestone-based seed funding, successful candidates will receive mentorship, technical support for product testing and development, and investor pitch training, followed by an opportunity to present their solution to Unilever for potential future collaboration

Eligibility 

• The opportunity is open to all businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and academics living in South Africa

• The Challenge aims to support sustainable consumption and the development of new circular business models for the reuse and refill of plastic goods, specifically those used in the online retail environment. As such, applications should address issues relating to product design and packaging, and seek to improve how, why and when products are consumed

Preola Adam, Sustainability Manager at Unilever South Africa says: “Plastic is a versatile and useful material, but with concerns growing around its impact and overuse, now is the time to bring together bright minds, big ideas and disruptive thinking, to workshop how we can use it in a more appropriate and sustainable manner.”

This opportunity forms part of Global Alliance Africa’s Innovation Exchange Challenges, and is aimed at supporting Unilever in achieving its goals of halving the amount of virgin plastic used in its packaging; reducing its plastic usage by more than 100,000 tonnes; and collecting and processing more plastic packaging than is sold.

In conclusion, Marisa Naidoo, Knowledge Transfer Manager South Africa at Global Alliance Africa, adds that, “Partnerships are a powerful means of driving growth and innovation, and with that in mind, we’re excited to collaborate with Unilever and be a catalyst for sustainable change in the South African market.”

How to apply

If you meet the above eligibility criteria, then submit your ideas before the deadline on Sunday, May 15, 2022. Your solutions must be suitable for the South African market.