Eco-Street: Green Jobs from the Recycling Round
It started with an invitation. The British Embassy in Tirana asked whether Tek Ura could help turn a simple idea into something real: collecting the plastic that piles up along the city's "Embassy Street", and in doing so, opening a door for someone who badly needed one.
Since 5 May 2025, that is exactly what has happened. Every week, a participant facing real hardship — recruited, trained, equipped and supervised by our team — gathers plastic bottles and aluminium cans from six embassies along the street: the Czech, Slovenian, Slovak, British, Chinese and Bulgarian missions. The materials are carried to a buy-back centre and kept out of landfill. The recycling income goes to the collector.
Small round, real impact
By the end of December 2025, the pilot had diverted nearly 400 kg of plastic and cans from landfill. Just as importantly, it gave one person a dependable weekly rhythm of work, new skills, social connection and a step towards more stable employment. As our progress report put it, the project delivered “a meaningful environmental impact — while providing weekly structured work, social engagement and skill-building.”
We want to be honest about the numbers, too: the recyclables currently earn less than the collection costs, so the pilot runs at a small loss. Environmentally and personally it clearly works. What it needs now is the investment to become sustainable.
The next step: Eco-Bridge Tirana
That is why we have applied to the Slovak Embassy's SlovakAid Small Grants 2026, with a project we're calling Eco-Bridge Tirana: Recycling for Green Jobs and Inclusion. If supported, over twelve months it would equip a sorting-and-baling station to recover far more value, expand the route beyond the embassies to local businesses and households, and provide green skills and a route to stable employment for at least six vulnerable adults — a deliberate majority of them women facing hardship.
The grant decision is still pending. But the vision is clear, and the pilot has already shown it can work: care for creation and care for people, in the same simple act.
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
— Genesis 2:15
