In the heart of Cape Town’s busiest townships, a simple bag of plastic is doing something truly special: putting dinner on the table and school shoes on children’s feet.
Cape Town, South Africa (05 February 2026) – For disadvantaged families whose daily grind is trying to put food on the table, the City of Cape Town is helping residents turn recyclables into everyday essentials like groceries, toiletries, and school supplies.
Through the mobile Swop Shop, recycling has gotten closer to home. Residents bring their recyclables to the Swop Shop and exchange them for items of value, particularly grocery essentials.
Since August 2025, 52 tonnes of waste have been diverted from landfill, while families received R161,000 worth of goods in return.
A Delft resident, Ruth Sinclair, shared that women benefit greatly from the initiative as it allows them to obtain food to feed their children. She added that although she has tried to encourage others to participate in recycling, some unfortunately have yet to recognise the rewards the initiative offers.
According to the City’s Senior Professional Officer for Waste Services, Noel Johannessen, in the first year of the project (2019/20), just under 100 tonnes of recyclable waste were collected, benefitting the community. In the second year, it was just under 90 tonnes – proving the service to be quite effective.
The Swop Shop is funded by the City and supported through the sale of collected recyclables, but private businesses are also invited to contribute. Donations of goods or supplies help the initiative expand and reach more families.
The service is available in Delft, Wesbank, Khayelitsha, Mfuleni, Lwandle, and Nomzamo at two locations to ensure as many people as possible can benefit.
This simple idea is changing lives, one bag at a time, and bringing cleaner, more sustainable neighbourhoods to communities across the city.
Related Story
Sources: City of Cape Town
Don’t ever miss the Good Things. Download the Good Things Guy App now on Apple or Google.
Do you have something to add to this story? Please share it in the comments or follow GoodThingsGuy on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date with good news as it happens, or share your good news with us by clicking here or click the link below to listen to the Good Things Guy Podcast with Brent Lindeque – South Africa’s very own Good Things Guy. He’s on a mission to change what the world pays attention to, and he truly believes there’s good news around us. In the Good Things Guy podcast, you’ll meet these everyday heroes and hear their incredible stories:
Or catch an episode of Good Things with Brent Lindeque or our Weekly Top 5 below. The videos here are always changing, updated with the latest episodes from these two shows. Both are part of Good Things TV, created to bring South Africans balance at a time when the news can feel overwhelmingly negative. Our goal is simple: to remind you that there are still so many good things happening in our country – and to leave you feeling a little more proudly South African.
by 
I saw the headline claiming that “one bag at a time is changing lives” and, like many people, I felt a flicker of hope. In a city where millions live below the breadline, that would be extraordinary. Then I read the figures – and the entire story collapsed under the weight of basic arithmetic.
The article states that 100 tonnes (100,000 kilograms) of waste generated R161,000. There is no interpretation required here. The maths is simple and unforgiving:
R161,000 ÷ 100,000 kg = about R1.60 per kilogram.
That means you need roughly 10 kilograms of waste just to buy R15 worth of food — and let’s be absolutely clear what R15 buys: a single loaf of dry white bread. No protein. No vegetables. No dignity. Just enough calories to stop hunger pains.
Now let’s talk about what a “bag of waste” actually weighs in the real world.
A standard black refuse bag filled with plastic waste — bottles, wrappers, packaging — is bulky but extremely light. Even being wildly generous, such a bag weighs maybe 150 grams. Let’s be absurdly charitable and call it 350 grams. At R1.60 per kilogram, that bag earns about 56 cents. You would need around 27 such bags to afford that R15 loaf of bread.
Now switch to empty bottles. Yes, you could theoretically get more weight — but at a cost. A black bag filled with empty bottles would likely tear, split, or be physically unmanageable, but let’s pretend it survives. Even then, you might get 5 kilograms if you’re lucky. That still only earns about R8. Not a meal. Not a loaf of bread. Not a life changed.
And here’s the part that never makes it into these glossy, pre-election fairy tales: the physical labour. The walking. The hauling. The sorting. The transport to the recycling depot. The waiting. Then the walk home — all for a return that doesn’t even replace the calories burned collecting the waste in the first place.
So no, this is not a story about “one bag at a time changing lives.” It is a story about huge effort yielding microscopic returns, cynically reframed as upliftment.
And the timing is not accidental.
The City of Cape Town is governed by the Democratic Alliance. Local elections are approaching. Facebook is suddenly saturated with shiny, feel-good stories portraying the DA as benevolent miracle workers. This piece fits that pattern perfectly: emotive, simplistic, and designed for people who won’t stop to do the maths.
What makes this especially offensive is that it was published by The Good Things Guy – a platform that trades on the idea that it is not for sale. Political parties should not be able to plant stories this tone-deaf and have them laundered as “good news”, especially when those stories disintegrate the moment anyone pauses to think.
This article was not written for people who are hungry. It was written about them, for an audience that will skim the headline, feel warm and fuzzy, and conclude, “Wow, the DA is doing amazing things.” Meanwhile, the reality in townships remains unchanged: recycling does not buy meals, hunger is not addressed, and poverty is not solved by slogans.
Calling this “good news” is grotesque. It trivialises poverty, weaponises hope, and insults anyone who understands what R15 worth of bread actually represents.
The Good Things Guy should not be for sale.
And if this is what passes for “upliftment” in election season, then the story isn’t about waste at all — it’s about propaganda.
It’s time for The Good Things Guy to retract this story, prove that they are genuinely not for sale, and demonstrate that they can still be a credible source of real, verifiable good news. Anything less is a betrayal of both their platform and their audience.