The world’s largest recycling village made from plastic waste.Project Wings is a non-profit organization based in Koblenz. On Sumatra, its flagship initiative is taking shape: a holistic approach that combines environmental protection, social responsibility, and economic development.Instead of managing symptoms, Project Wings builds functioning systems: infrastructure, jobs, educational opportunities, and economic structures designed for long-term viability.
Project Wings across 3 impact areas
Founded in 2019 by Marc Helwing and three other young changemakers, Project Wings follows a clear vision: environmental protection must be entrepreneurial, economically viable, and socially scalable.
Ecological impact
In Sumatra, Project Wings is building a functioning waste collection and recycling system, reintegrating plastic into product cycles, while also protecting the neighboring rainforest of Gunung Leuser National Park.
Social impact
The project creates long-term jobs with fair wages while giving children and young people access to environmental education and language classes.
Infrastructure instead of short-term aid
Recycling facilities, training programs, local value chains, and long-term partnerships create a model that can sustain itself and be replicated internationally.
In the recycling village, ecobricks are used as a building material: PET bottles packed with non-recyclable plastic serve as solid construction units. This allows the project to combine environmental protection, social responsibility, and economic development in one concrete place.
Located next to the world’s second most biodiverse rainforest, Project Wings protects habitats for endangered species such as orangutans and Sumatran tigers. At the same time, it develops reforestation projects, ecological farming, a botanical garden with 150 useful plants, and its own biochar, compost, and tree nursery processes.
The video shows the recycling village, the people on site, and the ambition to turn environmental problems into systems that remain viable over time.
Images from the recycling village in Sumatra, the educational site, and the surrounding environmental projects.
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Project Wings does not see itself only as a traditional NGO. The organization combines charitable work with entrepreneurial approaches in order to become less dependent on short-term donations and grants.
The goal is clear: ecological projects should be economically viable and scalable. Several sustainable business models have emerged from that approach.
With Wings Coin, Project Wings has developed a digital financing tool that helps hotels organize room cleaning more efficiently. When guests opt out of cleaning, water, energy, and CO2 are saved while environmental projects are supported at the same time.
Wings Dining is a sustainable gastronomy concept focused on plant-based cuisine. It combines modern culinary experiences with social value, while part of the revenue flows back into environmental work.
Wings Water is developed together with regional partner Rhenser. Its sugarcane-based packaging reduces circulating plastic, can be used as a branding medium for corporate partners, and supports concrete environmental measures in Sumatra with every unit sold.
The volunteering program is for anyone who wants to actively shape sustainability. Especially for students in environmental sciences, engineering, social sciences, or business, the project offers real fields of application.
Stays are possible from one week up to six months.
A stay in Sumatra means
In addition to volunteering, Project Wings offers exclusive business trips to Sumatra. They are designed for founders, decision-makers, and multipliers who want not only to understand sustainable business, but to experience it directly.
On site, participants visit the world’s largest recycling village, meet local partner initiatives, and see how innovative concepts become real solutions to pollution and poverty.
The goal is to build bridges between business, sustainability, and social change. The trip creates new perspectives, concrete impulses for action, and a foundation for long-term partnerships.
Support Project Wings with a donation or become part of the project in Sumatra as a volunteer.