Cape Town Designer and founder of Lilly Loompa, Lizl Naude (from Paarl), is known far and wide for her quirky, upcycled décor items. But more than that, she is known for her purposeful and environmentally-consciousness approach to design. In 2020, during the pandemic, she launched her “My Africa Lap Desk” made with discarded, waste material. It is currently their most popular product. In November 2022, Lizl decided to make the evolution from wood to recycled plastic for the next generation of the desk and launched it to market.
Founder Lizl’s goal for 2022 was to start producing the popular My Africa Lap Desk in recycled plastic which she aimed to collect within her local town, by cleaning up the rivers, parks etc. On 22 November, she happily to announce that she had reached her goal with the recycled plastic version launching to customers. This desk is an in-season product as many professionals and students still work and study from home. It is practical and can add immense value to people's lives. By purchasing this item, the community becomes part of the solution of keeping Lizl’s local town clean of waste. The desk can be customised and branded which makes it a desirable item to use for marketing, and the value-add is that the item has been made with actual waste found on the streets, rivers or parks of local communities. Because it is foldable, it can flat-pack, which makes it easy to ship all over South Africa, and even globally. By 1 December, Lizl hopes to launch a whole range of products upcycled from recycled plastic.
Compared to Europe and some first-world countries, South Africa is lagging behind in terms of seeing the value of recycling and upcycling. Over the last 5 years, Lilly Loompa Upcycled Homeware has been changing this narrative by producing high quality products made with discarded waste material and introducing it to market. Lizl and her team collect all the source material from neighbouring wine farms, construction sites, industrial kitchens and waste dump sites. It then goes through a process of cleaning and restoration, and finally it is transformed into a beautiful and usable product to use in the home.
Lilly Loompa has been the recipient of many awards in recognition for the impactful work it does. In 2020, Lizl accepted the South African Women in Climate Change Award. In 2021, the business received the Mail & Guardian Sustainable Design award in the #greeningthefuture category. The latest award is the 2022 Stellenbosch #IDEASFORCHANGE award.
The Lilly Loompa Story
Founder, Lizl Naude, shares the personal story of how Lilly Loompa started. She says, “My family and I lost all our material possessions a few times between 2006-2016. This caused immense financial suffering and setback. During this desperate time, I prayed for a solution and I clearly understood that the way out for my family (and also for others) was WASTE. Lilly Loompa (Pty) Ltd has been trading since 2018 and currently employs three people and outsourced teams. It is a young and upcoming Design Company and produces décor items and furniture with a conscience. It’s homeware is created through a process of hipcycling, which is essentially upcycling discarded waste and transforming it into desirable products that would complement your home. Eco-friendly, handcrafted and 100% South African, each Lilly Loompa piece, once trash, is now a meaningful piece of treasure. The aim is to clean South Africa through innovative upcycling. The goal is to lessen the amount of waste to landfill by designing and manufacturing desirable and usable homeware products that people can purchase on our on-line store and our B2B infrastructure, and now a physical retail concept shop. Through its enterprise, the hope is to increase the awareness about the circular economy by running various campaigns on social media and marketing platforms to raise awareness on what can be done with waste material. There is value found in waste and opportunities available for the communities of Stellenbosch and Paarl areas (where we are based), through collecting waste, and earning an income doing it.”
The way forward
Lilly Loompa is making a change in its local community by upcycling discarded waste material, into beautiful and usable homeware, thus adding to the circular economy. Based in Paarl, the company’s vision is to pioneer the way to a cleaner South Africa through innovative upcycling. The company has a long-term, two-fold plan to make this happen. Firstly, to work with scientists and engineers from University of Stellenbosch and CSIR and look at harvesting and creating new kind of materials from current waste streams. Founder Lizl Naude believes there is value in waste that is overlooked, and with more research and innovation, it can be a much-needed commodity. After the new material has been deemed as safe and usable, the aim is to create new products that can be sold directly to the public at its stores and online. These products will be manufactured at Lilly Loompa’s micro-factories which is a manufacturing facility where community members will produce the products. The aim is also to have a collection facility where people will be paid for clean and usable waste. In this way the business will create income opportunities for the community members while they simultaneously keep their neighbourhoods clean.
For more information, contact Lizl Naude, Owner & Creative Director, Lilly Loompa.
WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | EMAIL lizl@lillyloompa.com | TEL +27 823205589
