Bancalimentos is a business that started in the rural area of Zetaquirá (Boyacá, Colombia). It was started in 2015 by Olga Yaneth Bocarejo and her family, while seeking to fight three of the most common challenges in the Colombian rural area: the incorrect disposal of waste, financial exclusion of rural people and food insecurity.
Through this project, people living in scattered rural areas can exchange waste (organic, solid, and cloth) for money to buy food, agricultural inputs, essential medicines and cleaning products. In addition, those who belong to Bancalimentos have access to social and technical assistance services, food credit and nutritional insurance –which are also paid with waste–.
The waste that is delivered to Bancalimentos "is sold as a raw material for entrepreneurial and creative companies that transform it to carry out an industrial symbiosis, a whole generation dynamic of circular economy to take it so that they are what transform it". And if they receive a type of waste that they cannot transform, they search for the company that can be interested in it, or they do it themselves by joining universities to create solutions around waste derivate products.
Bancalimentos was born to reshape the idea of value: from whatever you have available (that goes from food, food waste, plastic, carton, etc) you make a deposit in the collection center, you receive points in exchange into your account, and you can trade it for food packages or save it as credit for the future. This way, she tackles the problems of her context with a triple impact: an economic impact through improving spending power, a health impact by improving nutrition, and an environmental impact by reducing waste that goes into landfills.
Facebook @bancalimentos
Bancalimentos has three main objectives:
Create nutritional insurance that protects the whole family in case of a calamity of one of its members).
Create nutritional credit that allows people to always get access to the basic food supply when there is food scarcity.
Create a savings account where people can save up for the future.
I had the opportunity to meet Olga, some years ago at an event in Bogotá. I remember her thrive, intelligence and humbleness. Everything was an opportunity for her. For me, Olga is one of the most innovative and successful women in Colombia. Together with her family, they have turned a business from the idea of a food bank into a bank that gives the opportunity to people in vulnerable conditions to save for a future with the products they have available at hand. Besides waste exchange for food security, Bancalimentos has custom made products for children and women, such as Bancakid, which allow rural children to have their first bank account and save for their studies and study supplies; and Gestaahorro, which allows pregnant and lactating mothers to guarantee an adequate and integral diet.
¨To change the world you need a certain degree of madness (...) And if the only thing my people have is guavas, those guavas have value. We can use that value and transform it into something people need¨. Olga Yaneth Bocarejo
Photo: bancalimentos.co
More information and interesting links about this business :
Bancalimentos website: www.bancalimentos.co
TEDxBogotá (in spanish): https://www.ted.com/talks/olga_yaneth_bocarejo_un_banco_creado_con_basura
United Nations Development Programme (PNUD Colombia -in spanish): https://colombiapnud.medium.com/bancalimentos-una-iniciativa-que-puede-cambiar-el-mundo-a-partir-de-residuos-abc602315fd2
Food Banking (in english): https://aim2flourish.com/innovations/food-banking
Comments