Tanzania, April 14 -- When Grace Kileo talks about the years she spent buying recyclable waste under a tree in Mwanzange, she does not romanticise it.

"I was working in very difficult conditions. I was not meeting my needs as required," she says. 

There was no proper structure. No formal recognition. No stable buyers. She bought hard plastics, scrap metal and nylon from whoever passed by. Some days she made sales, some days she did not. The work felt temporary, uncertain.

Today, she manages one of eight Taka Benki (Waste Banks) operating in Tanga City under the Kijana na Mazingira Project implemented by Zaidi Recyclers and Taka Ni Ajira Foundation under the TangaYetu program. The difference, she says, is not only physical, it is e...