Kay Blada Recycling

Kay Blada Recycling is working to clean up plastic trash, promote environmental stewardship, and provide meaningful employment in Haiti.

Each day, people collect plastic off the streets, which Kay Blada buys and then transports to a plastic company in Haiti for recycling, simultaneously providing employment and cleaning up massive amounts of plastic waste.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and a majority of the people who collect plastic for Kay Blada are women over the age of fifty, trying to support their families. For many, the money they earn collecting this plastic is the only way they can afford to buy daily meals or send their children to school.

Kay Blada runs two primary projects - plastic recycling and environmental education. Our recycling center handles plastic and aluminum that is collected off the streets, while teachers in Hinche provide environmental education to K-12 students.

10 Exciting Accomplishments From 2018...

Kay Blada purchased its first permanent plot of land. With a generous $5,000 donation, Kay Blada began to make payments on a half-acre plot outside of Hinche, where a building will be constructed for permanent operations. We will be moving in November 2019!

Our environmental education program was brought to 1,000 Haitian students. 25 teachers currently teach to over 1,000 students every day in Hinche using our teaching materials.

Kay Blada began collecting recycling from Haitian hospitals. Haitian hospitals will now be collecting plastic for recycling by Kay Blada. Medical waste is never handled by our collectors.

Our documentary began production in Haiti. Kay Blada's vice president, Erin Danford, won a grant from the Jon Curtis Student Enrichment Fund to film a documentary in Hinche about Kay Blada. She traveled to Haiti with Blada in July and met many of our collectors. Screening date will be announced soon.

Kay Blada collected and recycled 99,128 pounds of plastic. As of December 2018, Kay Blada had collected almost 100,000 pounds of plastic from the streets of Hinche. Without our collectors, that plastic would have been burned or end up in the waterways.

We became an official 501(c)(3) certified organization and formed our first board of directors. With the support of the UNC Community Development Law Clinic, Kay Blada became an official tax-exempt non-profit organization in the United States.

Our founder was featured in a Forbes article about 10 Haitian Entrepreneurs reinventing the nation.

Kay Blada's generator and baler began running, allowing us to compress recycled plastic into cubes to more efficiently transport the material to be recycled.

Kay Blada purchased a three-wheel motocart to support our collectors. Many of our collectors are women over the age of 50 who carry sacks of plastic multiple miles to sell to Kay Blada. Our new three-wheeler can now pick up their plastic from wherever they are.

Kay Blada became part of an official effort to establish a city-wide waste-management program in Hinche. GIZ, a German international development organization, is designing a program with municipal government to collect garbage from people's homes in Hinche. They will sell all of the recyclable material to Kay Blada to be recycled!

How Can You Help?

We are currently raising $20,000 for our first piece of land, where Kay Blada will operate permanently. With a very generous donation of $5,000, we have put down our first payment. Help us raise the remaining $15,000 by making a donation now at www.kayblada.com/donate.