About

Behind the Brand

We are sen­si­ble and prac­ti­cal, pas­sion­ate about the envi­ron­ment and uplift­ing dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties. We believe in pros­per­ing with oth­ers, and there­fore pride our­selves on our women empow­er­ment ini­tia­tive which pro­vides skills train­ing and enter­pris­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to pre­vi­ously unem­ployed women, thereby encour­ag­ing a cul­ture of self-?sufficiency which in turn alle­vi­ates poverty. We part­ner with house­holds and encour­age them to con­sider their impact on the envi­ron­ment by recy­cling at home and using our recy­cled draw­string bin bags.

Vision - To build a busi­ness that con­tributes towards preser­va­tion of the envi­ron­ment, social uplift­ment and enter­prise devel­op­ment, whilst opti­mis­ing stake­holder value.

Mis­sion - To pur­sue prac­tices which will help the envi­ron­ment and sus­tain nat­ural resources, while uplift­ing dis­ad­van­taged women through entre­pre­neur­ial opportunities.

The Supa Mama Story

Back in 2012, Mike Maziya, CEO of Veri­green saw a woman col­lect­ing plas­tic rub­bish from the streets of Pine­town. Being in the plas­tic busi­ness he was curi­ous and stopped to talk to her. The woman explained that she was unem­ployed. To make money, she gath­ered waste to sell to recy­cling plants in the hope of earn­ing enough to feed her chil­dren and send them to school. These were the same recy­cling plants Veri­green bought its recy­cled plas­tic from to use in the pro­duc­tion of the refuse bags.

That night Mike retold the woman's story to his wife, Thina, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Veri­green. Being a mother, Thina was moved by the story and the woman's strug­gle to pro­vide for her fam­ily in such try­ing cir­cum­stances. Being a busi­ness woman, she believed that there was an oppor­tu­nity to assist unem­ployed women in earn­ing an income by cut­ting out the middleman.

So began, The Supa Mama Project.

The project is a waste-?to-?product ini­tia­tive. Veri­green invests in a team of peo­ple who go out into rural areas and meet with women who are cur­rently unem­ployed. They are offered train­ing in terms of what plas­tic Veri­green uses in the pro­duc­tion of the Supa Mama bags. They are taught how to source, sort and grade the plas­tic so as to achieve the best qual­ity in the final product.

Sup­port is offered to these women through the pro­vi­sion of pinafores and hats so that the women feel part of a big­ger fam­ily instead of as an indi­vid­ual. The women are trained in SMS bank­ing, which is a safer option for them than car­ry­ing cash.

Veri­green fur­ther realised that the dis­tance these women have to travel to drop off the plas­tic col­lected is time con­sum­ing, drain­ing and where trans­port is required, expen­sive. To offer fur­ther sup­port, Veri­green set up col­lec­tion points in strate­gic areas where they col­lect the plas­tic directly from the women.

To date, Veri­green works with over 100 women and is work­ing to increase this num­ber to 500.

Supa Mama is the only com­pany to man­u­fac­ture draw­string ba