From the recycling of plastic we have seen emerge useful items, sympathetic, unpublished.
But cleaning up the reserves of the Maasai Mara neglect of the human race could have marked out jewels of rare beauty and at the same time helping girls with big social problems, frankly we'd least expect.
Yet here is an example of how, by combining creativity and environmental protection, in Kenya we can get to reach brilliant results.
If to give birth to beautiful things is an Italian girl, the pleasure of talking about it and promote its initiative is double!
Her name is Michela Council, has just turned forty and is native of Sicily.
After earning the hospitality diploma and having worked as a travel agent, he falls in love with Africa in 2005 during a trip to Congo.
"I had gone to visit my sister who worked at an NGO in the Democratic Republic of Congo - says Michela - It was love at first sight with the Black Continent, although that was not certainly the most peaceful place to live. So I did a little 'voluntary and luckily, just when I was about to return to Italy (because of voluntary service is not campa ...) I found work with a South African airline. "
If the pain of Africa helps to overcome the adaptation and anxieties of living in a country at war, love can break down all the other resistances.
"One of my colleagues was a Kenyan - continues the Sicilian creative - with him is born something important and together we decided to leave the war and wait for a peace that would never come. We've been married for 11 years and Kenya today is my home ".
In these years Michela lived in a house with no electricity, no television and no friends, working as a tour operator.
"Every time I went out I noticed the plastic and rubbish everywhere. A torture for my eyes and my soul. At Hell's Gate the same. Tourists (unfortunately often local) threw everything from beer cans to the paper on the floor. Sure, I think about it, I wondered where they had to throw it, since I have never seen in Nairobi and around a waste collection system seriously ".
So Michela, in his spare time, he began to cultivate an idea. Studies on youtube, follows "tutorial" and examples from around the world through the internet and start creating from plastic objects that resemble glass.
Start with the necklaces, then other jewelry that she wears and sells in the boutique of the camp in the Maasai Mara of which in the meantime has become managers.
A precious and original pastime? A woman and a vital defiant as Michela would never have been enough, so organized with the boys of the camp clean-up days and explains why it is not a good habit to treat their country as a giant trash bag.
"We went to the Look Out, a famous place in the Maasai Mara for the view but also for trash - remember the Italian environmentalist - and we took off from there every single piece of paper. I took pictures to plastic bottles and lunch boxes with the names of some companies and privately we have contacted to notify you that we have found "their" garbage inside the reserve and that they should communicate with their guides not to leave "taka taka" around".
Michela does not stop: After creating eclastic, the production of recycled jewelry online sales, holds workshops to some Maasai women and teaches them how to create necklaces with plastic. It comes more and more. Many are girls who escaped the genital mutilation or early marriage, other women with other problems behind.
"Should I take them all, help them through trade in my jewels - explains Michela - but how? We should set up a working chain that begins with the collection of plastic, paying those who cleans, and there the door, then arrange the women in an ad hoc working environment and ultimately commercialize everything. But I'm alone and I have to work to live, even if I continue to cultivate what I call my "mission impossible."
The great heart of Michela goes hand in hand with his creative genius.
Fifty percent of the creations of Eclastic go to women who help and they need it. One of these girls live with her and her husband and her two children are studying thanks to jewelry.
As long as the sale of jewelry is restricted to the safari tourists, it is difficult to fast forward the wonderful initiative that combines environmental protection, talent and solidarity.
So take a trip on www.eclastic.org, started to buy local plastic jewelry Michela and know that soon Malindikenya.net will make sure they get on the Kenyan coast on a permanent basis.