Transforming Plastic Waste into Football Products for Youth
August 30, 2024
On Tuesday, we were excited to announce the five inaugural recipients of the new annual Ignite365 Awards as part of the Olympism365 Innovation Hub—a collaboration between the International Olympic Committee, Beyond Sport and Women Win. Each organization is advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in innovative ways and will receive an initial grant of $10,000 to support their projects.
Today, meet Argentina-based Fenikks, which is transforming plastic waste into shin guards for football players in 56 disadvantaged neighborhoods across seven regions of the country. The sporting goods manufacturer also focuses on local youth. For every pair of shin guards it sells, another is donated to a football club in the identified neighborhoods. So far, it has donated 3,000 pairs of shin guards and has plans to start creating football boots from plastic waste.
24-year-old Fenikks Founder and CEO, Tomás Machuca, spoke to us about Fenikks’ inception, the importance of sustainability and future plans for the organization:
Can you tell us about how the vision for Fenikks came about?
Fenikks was not born with the idea of transforming waste into shin guards, it was born because I didn’t have them. When I was 16 years old, I played football with the dream of improving the quality of life of my family. In a training session, my shin guards broke, and there was no money left at home to buy new ones. I decided to find a way to make my own. I took a bucket that I had lying around in the backyard, cut it with a saw, molded it with my grandmother’s hair dryer (which burned) and added a design with images of my family that I made in paint. I then printed it two blocks from my house with $60 pesos that I had saved to charge my school card to go to training. The next game I went to the club and my teammates asked me where I got them from, to which I answered out of embarrassment: “An uncle who lives in Buenos Aires sells them.” He didn’t exist.
I did not realize that I was missing the opportunity to develop a life project, which I decided to start when I was 17 years old in my last year of high school. Five years have passed and after having recycled more than 2000 kilos of plastic waste, delivered more than 5,000 pairs of shin pads to clubs in poor neighborhoods, recovered more than 1000 kilos of plastic waste in more than 50 clubs in 8 regions of Argentina and worked with 10 professional clubs in the country. I returned to the club where it all began to deliver 400 pairs of shin pads to all the children and youth divisions so that everyone can play.
It all started with a child who dreamed of improving the quality of life of his family through football, but football led me to work to improve the quality of life and living spaces in each of the neighborhoods that we reach.
Why is environmental sustainability important for your organization?
For us, it is important to give a new and useful life to plastic waste because it’s our way of keeping local living spaces clean and habitable. We’re showing communities in underserved neighborhoods that what they conceive as waste, can be revived as a useful and impactful tool.
How do you feel your work is contributing creative solutions to the SDGs?
Fenikks is unique because it leverages the sense of belonging and community that football generates to share the importance of taking responsible action for the environment. Sports teaches us how to relate to each other in order to grow, so the opportunity for it to be used to share the importance of caring for our planet is being wasted. That is what we embrace and promote, to create conditions where kids can grow and play in economically disadvantaged communities where waste – that would have ended up polluting our world – could be returned as equipment that they struggle to get.
What are the challenges facing Argentinian youth that you’re trying to address?
In Argentina, 57% of children and adolescents live below the poverty line. It is difficult for their families to put food on the table and, even more so, to be able to provide them with the necessary elements to practice sports. For this reason, at Fenikks we transform plastic waste collected in underserved neighborhood clubs into football shin guards. For each pair sold, we donate another to each of these clubs as a reward for taking responsible action for the environment. This allows young athletes to not only learn about sustainability but also helps them play football more equitably, with the necessary protection needed for matches.
Pablo, a coach at “Las Cebollitas de Cabildo,” a club in Barrio Cabildo, Cordoba Capital highlights perfectly how Fenikks impacts youth: “More than a solution, Fenikks fulfills a small part of kids’ dreams. There are many who don’t know that a football player uses protection in every game, the first time I showed the kids, they didn’t know what I was talking about. By putting on the shin guards they feel like a player, by having all the equipment they need, they feel like a player. This is partly powering their dream.”
Why is it important for you as a young change-maker to contribute to a sustainable future?
Because I believe it can generate equitable conditions for everyone. This is the basis for achieving transcendence in every disadvantaged community throughout the world. If stories and examples arise from these contexts with thousands of obstacles, we can go even further.
How will the Olympism365 Innovation Hub help boost your impact?
We believe that the Innovation Hub can help us expand our impact by connecting us with organizations that allow us to begin globalizing our mission, working towards using sport as a tool for transformation.
What is the future for Fenikks?
Fenikks seeks to lead the introduction of sustainability in sports, transforming as much plastic waste as possible. We dream that football players and elite sports organizations bet on playing with sustainable and high-performance equipment, rather than with brands that generate a negative impact. We work so that in every neighborhood where a child plays barefoot, we can share the importance of caring for and maintaining the cleanliness of living spaces and provide sports equipment of all kinds. Sport saves, inclusion empowers.
Stay tuned to hear from the other Award recipients over the coming weeks!
The Olympism365 Innovation Hub is accepting applications for the Enterprise365 grant through August 31 with additional funding opportunities to come. Learn more and apply here.