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- CirCon#49: How TCB is Tackling Poverty with Circularity [sponsored by Iron Mountain]
CirCon#49: How TCB is Tackling Poverty with Circularity [sponsored by Iron Mountain]
A huge thank you to Iron Mountain for sponsoring this week’s newsletter!
Iron Mountain draws on over 70 years of trusted expertise in data security, logistics, and storage to deliver end-to-end IT asset lifecycle management services. From secure data sanitisation and certified disposal through to resale and value recovery, Iron Mountain helps organisations maximise value, minimise risk, and meet sustainability goals.
Click here to learn more!
Happy Monday! Let’s get stuck in.
Circular Feature Showcase: Taking Care of Business (TCB)
TCB is an independent non-profit South African social enterprise, founded in Cape Town in 2010 by Tracey Chambers (CEO) and Tracey Gilmore (COO). Their mission is powerful: to enable unemployed South Africans to break the cycle of poverty by creating small business opportunities within the circular economy.
Over the past 15 years, TCB has built six flagship programmes that ensure unwanted clothing, appliances, homewares, fabrics, and other products are recovered, repaired, remade, resold, and redistributed - reducing waste, protecting brands, and creating self-employment at scale.
The Programmes:
Resell - enabling unemployed mothers to become successful fashion traders by fuelling their businesses with donations of excess clothing and merchandise.
Repair - enabling unemployed South Africans to run appliance repair and trading businesses with donations of damaged, broken, and excess electronics.
Remake - enabling seamstresses to run financially viable micro-manufacturing businesses with donations of fabric, cut samples, and haberdashery from supply chain partners.
Redistribute - donating merchandise and clothing to nonprofits that support the vulnerable.
Reskill - equipping organisations with skills training workshops to support their employees and staff with financial and social independence.
Grow ECD - enabling preschools to operate as sustainable businesses that deliver quality education in low income communities.
The Impact:
TCB’s approach blends access to resources and capital with holistic personal development, focusing on the head (skills and knowledge), heart (self-belief and resilience), and hands (practical experience). The overall impact? Thousands of active, contributing citizens who inspire others, and a growing ecosystem of circular businesses.
The Ethos:
Looking ahead, TCB’s goal is bold yet clear: to eradicate poverty in South African families by equipping aspiring entrepreneurs with the tools to unlock their potential, while driving circular solutions that benefit both society and the environment.
Get Involved:
TCB welcomes additional retail or manufacturing partners looking to solve economic and environmental challenges by leveraging a simple, no cost solution for waste. To learn more and collaborate, reach out to Tracey Gilmore:
☎️ +27 73 321 1911
📧 [email protected]
🔗 www.tcb.org.za
Tracey Chambers (left) and Tracey Gilmore (right)
Circular Calendar
[Free Webinar] The Digital Workplace: A Key Opportunity for Your Organisation’s Green Strategy
Hosted by Closing the Loop as part of ReLondon’s Circular Economy Week 2025, this interactive free webinar will guide you through how your organisation’s digital workplace can become a driver of sustainability — and what that means for organisations aiming to align operational efficiency with sustainability goals.
Join Joost de Kluijver (Co-founder and CEO of Closing the Loop), Hugo Warner (Circular Economy Expert and Consultant), Ray Knight (Head of Sustainability Services at Atos) and Nicole Scott (Technology Journalist and Moderator) to gain:
✅ A practical understanding of circularity in the workplace
✅ Strategies to embed circularity into device procurement and IT operations
✅ Insights from real-life case studies
👉️ Register here 👈️
UK & Ireland | EMEA & APAC | The Americas | |
|---|---|---|---|
29 Sep - 05 Oct | Responsible Packaging Expo | Tech for Climate Action — Retech Days MENA — European Sustainable Electronics Forum | Pack Expo — SER 2025 |
06 Oct - 12 Oct | Recycling Expo | Economist Impact Sustainability Week Europe — Arctic Circular Economy Summit — Pollutec — Sustainable Brands Turkiye — K 2025 | The Battery Show North America — SEIA Sustainability Conference — Sustainability Reporting USA |
13 Oct - 19 Oct | Sustainability in Metals Forum — Blue Earth Summit — ASCBI | Sustainable Waste Management — Textile Exchange Conference — IFAT India — Supply Chain Europe 2025 — World Sustainability Congress | SB’ 25 San Diego — RIC-RIT World Remanufacturing Conference — Paper and Plastics Recycling Conference |
20 Oct - 26 Oct | CE Week London — ReLondon Closing the Loop Webinar — Sustainability Europe 2025 — Circular Summit | Parcel+Post Expo — The Business Booster — Carbon Capture Expo | FORUM25 |
Have a superb week and we’ll see you again on Friday!
Cheers to circularity,
#TeamCircularConnect #ConnectingTheCircularEconomy