There’s always a need among families to cut down their costs when preparing for back to school.

That’s why Maria Greenland has decided to pour her time and resources as a programme manager into UniCycle, a nonprofit organisation that recycles lightly used school uniforms in Jamaica.

Being in operation for seven years, there are many highlights, but one particular milestone stands out to Maria.

“When we passed a thousand uniforms collected and redistributed, that has been our major milestone which we are very proud of,” she said.

The pandemic also presented the opportunity for UniCycle to get creative, as they teamed up with the Hope programme and HEART to collect fabric and turn it into face masks to send out with their uniforms.

UniCycle originally began by accepting uniforms for boys from basic school to high school before they later started collections and redistributions for girls but that transition wasn’t what posed a challenge for the programme.

“Along the way, we have noticed that each year we get more and more regular clothing donated, which is great and it will get redistributed as well, but we really want to emphasize that our main priority is collecting and redistributing uniforms — khaki uniforms and girls uniforms, especially this year after Hurricane Beryl and so many people want to find out a way to give back, they’ve been giving a lot of clothing but we really, really need uniforms,” she emphasised.

Maria, who is also a student at Campion College, said from the beginning, the institution has been an important collection location for UniCycle. The support has always been felt from each outgoing graduating class, with students donating their uniforms and asking questions throughout the term about their items before the donation period began.

“Come mek wi dance” is the sister initiative to Unicycle, one that was founded on the cultural fact that dancing is a “way of life” in Jamaica. To spread that joy of dancing sustainably, programme manager Maria said for two years now UniCycle has been reaching out to the performing arts sector at the Ministry of Education to collect costumes from professional dance companies as well as activewear, dance wear and shoes to make it happen.

“Something as simple as a leotard and a ballet shoe, it’s really valuable to wear those and be able to dance in them as a young child,” Maria said.

However, donations don’t just come from locals. An Amazon Wishlist was created by the nonprofit programme to accommodate requests from the diaspora on how to donate, where they can help the initiative directly by sending items on the wish list to an overseas shipping company that will ship to Jamaica.

Looking ahead, UniCycle plans to establish a permanent clothing textile recycling infrastructure for regular clothes in Jamaica as there is a real market for people who want to give away their clothing. “They should be able to do that in a sustainable manner to prevent backlog that ends up in landfills,” Greenland said, considering clothing will not degrade properly in that fashion.

UniCycle would also love to reach out to more schools to continue increasing their collections.