Start-up aims to boost environmental, economic sustainability through mobile app for sorting waste

AMMAN — GreenJo, a start-up mobile application recently launched in the Kingdom, aims to spread environmental awareness and support the local community.

The project enables Jordanians to earn money by selling their sorted waste at fixed market prices directly to GreenJo, CEO and Founder Osama Ghwiri told The Jordan Times on Sunday.

The start-up stores the waste bought from the sellers until there is enough to resell in large quantities to interested entities or recycle into reusable products.

Through the application, sellers can sort their waste in two ways: Into organic and non-organic materials, or into organic materials, plastic, paper, cardboard and metal. Selling prices vary depending on the category, with the second category selling at a higher price due to its greater number of divisions, he said.

According to Ghwiri, there are 17 ways of sorting waste in total, all of which will be gradually incorporated into the application's sorting process.

Covering Amman, Zarqa and Mafraq, the project is scheduled to be introduced in Irbid next week. In the 10 days since its launch, GreenJo has accumulated 1,239 users and completed 129 orders, according to data sent to The Jordan Times on Sunday. 

In cooperation with charity organisations, the application is also set to include a “donation” button to allow users to contribute their earnings to a participating charity organisation of their choosing, Ghwiri said.

The founder also expressed hopes for future collaboration with NGOs to recycle materials collected by the project to replace plastic bags used in supermarkets with paper bags free of charge.

GreenJo was selected as one of the top 100 start up applications out of 170,000 from 166 countries that applied to Start-up Istanbul in 2020, he added.