Marta’s business could sit comfortably in either the category for green business or business for good – as it’s a green business doing social good!
The idea for Marta’s innovative business followed a tragedy after a friend was in a car accident, Marta witnessed the difficulties he had in accessing prostheses. Seeking a green and sustainable solution to this led Marta and her co-founder Munir Zaad to create the first prosthetic based on waste plastic collected from the sea.
Because BioMec reuses plastic waste – like ghost fishnets and PET bottles – not only is it helping remove plastic from our oceans it also allows for competitive pricing. This widens access to this product in a country where 90% of the amputee population can’t obtain prosthetics. BioMec is striving to change that.
BioMec is a community effort and involves the fishing community from their local beach, where they collect and exchange ghost fishnets, creating a circle where the community gains additional income and awareness, and BioMec gets the raw material to work with.
They are now conducting a pilot with over 700 users in Mozambique and Angola and expect to transform around two tonnes of plastic residuals into prosthetics over the next eight months.