From plastic pollution to paint pots… one South African woman is proving that nothing is truly waste when innovation and heart collide.
Pretoria, South Africa (13 May 2025) – What happens when one South African woman on a mission turns a cleanup project into a community crusade? In Centurion, environmentalist Tarryn Johnston has rallied hundreds of volunteers to rescue the Hennops River from pollution. In the first four years her group – the Hennops Revival – has hauled a staggering 5 million kilograms of waste out of the river.
What began after a devastating 2019 flood as a small weekend clean-up has become a full-time mission. Tarryn’s passion is contagious: neighbours, schoolchildren and businesses joined in and it didn’t take long before this local effort captured international attention.
Along the way she kept pushing boundaries… even exploring how to turn all that plastic into something useful, like a new kind of paint.
Meet Tarryn Johnston
Tarryn grew up playing beside the Hennops River in Centurion and always cared deeply about her local environment. When a massive flood struck in late 2019, it stirred up tonnes of buried rubbish in the riverbeds. Moved by the mess, and by a plea from her own daughter for a cleaner river, Tarryn organised a one‑off community clean-up. The response was overwhelming. By early 2020 she had formalised Hennops Revival as a public-benefit organisation dedicated to restoring the river.
From that first clean-up day onward, Tarryn poured her energy into the project full-time (even without taking a salary). She believes the river is literally part of people’s heritage. A source of life to protect. And refuses to give up. Neighbours note that wherever there’s a tangle of plastic in the Hennops, you’ll find Tarryn and her team pulling it out. But instead of turning away, Johnston used these sights to motivate her community.
“We all share this water,” she says, and we need to look after it.
Volunteers dressed in rain gear haul debris from a knee‑deep pool of river water. Every clean-up day, teams wade into the muck to pull out plastic bags, bottles and every kind of garbage. The results speak for themselves. By April 2022, Hennops Revival had already removed roughly 1.5 million kg of refuse from the river in about 65,000 bags. In the two years since, that figure has more than tripled, reaching 5 million kilograms of trash cleared (the weight of dozens of elephants).
Here are some of the highlights of what Hennops Revival has achieved:
- Over 5 million kg of waste removed from rivers so far
- 39,000 volunteer hours logged, and 8,000 job opportunities created for locals on clean-up and recycling projects
- Thousands of community volunteers have pitched in – from schoolkids to corporate teams – helping bag up rubbish and raise awareness
- Jobs and purpose for locals: Many of the clean-up crew are paid staff drawn from Centurion’s homeless or unemployed; Hennops Revival now pays them to work on the river, giving them income and a sense of purpose
These efforts are more than just numbers. Every bag cleared prevents pollution downstream and every paid local helps a family survive. The project has turned environmental care into community empowerment.
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As Tarryn reflects, the Hennops clean-ups are having ripple effects: wildlife starts to return to cleaner waters, people are learning to respect the river, and local pride is growing. She reminds everyone that we all share this water, and by working together we can keep it healthy.
Turning Trash into Paint
But Tarryn hasn’t stopped at picking up litter. She’s also thinking creatively about what to do with it. After each event the team ends up with thousands of bags of sorted plastic and debris.
“We really do not want to take these thousands of bags of waste to landfills,” she admits, “but there is little else we can do. Most of my free time is spent thinking about how to turn this waste into a sustainable economic opportunity, which would ensure circularity, empower communities and generate revenue for the much-needed river cleanups, thereby guaranteeing stable jobs, and increased scale.”
That mindset led to a remarkable breakthrough. In their workshop Johnston and her helpers ran simple experiments with shredded plastic from the river.
“In one of our experiments, we had some surprising results – we turned river waste into paint!” she explains. “And this paint is waterproof, fireproof, and rustproof, and our next steps will be in the necessary laboratory testing and accreditations. We are actively expiring avenues and uses to find the right partners to take our ‘clean-up paint’ to where it can make a difference.”
The result is essentially a low‑cost primer or coating made from recycled polymer, a real example of a circular economy at work. If it passes safety and performance tests, this paint could be used to coat outdoor structures, metal bridges or boats, protecting them while giving the old plastic waste a second life.
Johnston’s excitement is clear: what was once river trash could become an eco-friendly product, funding more clean-ups and scaling up the mission. It’s innovation driven by necessity: every litre of paint produced would be one less bag of waste in a landfill and one more resource in the economy. This bold project shows that creative science and community spirit can turn even the biggest mess into something useful.
Tarryn’s story is proof that ordinary people can spark extraordinary change. A passionate South African armed with gloves and grit has united a community to clean up a river… and even find value in the waste. Her work is a shining example of positive innovation: from the muddy banks of Hennops we are seeing new ideas bloom.
For Tarryn, the greatest reward is the feeling of hope it creates. As she often says, when everyone does their bit, the results can surprise us.
“We all share this water”, she reminds people, and that shared responsibility can bring people together.
Looking ahead, Hennops Revival has big plans: more regular clean-ups, education in schools, and scaling up the paint project with industry partners. With every challenge, the community finds another way to tackle it. Proof that innovation doesn’t happen in labs alone but in gatherings of caring people. The payoff is not just a cleaner river but a stronger community and a brighter future.
It’s a story that ends on a high note: if we work together, even the humblest clean-up can help paint a better world.
*The statistics of what Tarryn has achieved are as of March 2024. We are waiting for updated reports.
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