Base recycler joined innovation: Created brick with cardboard waste
Through his small business and with the support of Corfo, he conducted research and development, which allowed him to innovate with a product that complies with the regulations to be used in construction.
Searching for a solution that would allow her to face the voracious fire that reduced her venture to ashes was the opportunity that certified recycling base worker Pamela Cornejos Quevedo saw when she applied to the Corfo's Súmate a Innovar program, which allowed her to create a construction brick made from cardboard and cement waste.
Pamela is a business administration engineer and, together with Miguel Ayca Huarachi, founded the Integral and Ecological Cleaning Services Society Ayca Cornejos SpA. With this company, they accessed the Corfo subsidy in 2023. "Research and development allowed us to create a brick that complies with Chilean construction regulations and can be used for screens, partitions, public furniture for squares and sidewalks," said the Talca-born, but adopted by Arica.
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Pamela met Miguel in 2015, who transferred to her his experience and knowledge in circular economy acquired from over 12 years of work in Sweden, a country that manages 99% of its waste. Thus, in January 2018, the company named Sociedad Renlighet SpA was born, which has two lines of work: cleaning services and waste management. "We were born with the idea of combining cleaning with recycling. We have the conviction that cleaning should go hand in hand with recycling, and waste segregation should be done at source. We need to change our mindset from the linear economy model, and learn that everything we throw away or dispose in our homes is not 'garbage', on the contrary, it is 'waste' that can be reused or become raw material for another product," the entrepreneur shared.
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They developed an educational project on segregation and waste management with the companies they provided their services to, mainly on 21st May street (between Prat and Lynch). Thus, they managed to have around twenty small and medium-sized enterprises as customers, which meant collecting 6 tons of cardboard waste monthly, which they later sent to Santiago.
In September 2021, thanks to another waste manager, they arrived at the land where they are now in Villa Frontera, which allowed them to apply for and be awarded funds from the Sercotec Crece program to purchase a compactor machine, a scale, and implement a collection point. And with a Fogape from BancoEstado, they added a van.
Everything was going well until in February 2022, a fire completely destroyed the business. By the end of the year, they manage to get a loan from the bank to purchase a truck specifically adapted for the transport of non-hazardous solid waste, refurbish the compactor machine, and resume waste removal work within downtown businesses.
However, in January 2023, at the national level the purchase price of cardboard showed a considerable drop, making it unfeasible to cover the costs generated in the transport of the processed waste to the capital.
Thus arises the need for these wastes to be valued in the region and the possibility of winning the Súmate a innovar, which after a year of trial and error, allowed them to obtain a composite material from waste cardboard and concrete or another binder, which possesses desirable structural properties for the construction industry. "We needed someone to make our idea a reality and there Corfo appeared with the Súmate a Innovar, without that support we would not have achieved it," Pamela emphasized.
The past August 21st will be a hard date to forget for these partners, because on that day and after nine months of different procedures, they executed the shipment of the first truck with recovered and recycled cardboard to Tacna, as part of the alliance they reached with a Peruvian recycling company. This allows them to valorize waste and also reduce the carbon footprint generated in the development of their activity.