Behind “The smoke that thunders” a quieter crisis is unfolding in Victoria Falls. 

It’s not poaching. It’s not hunting. It’s plastic.

Elephants, Zimbabwe’s iconic giants and nature’s ‘knowledge-keepers’ are dying slow invisible deaths caused by our waste. At open-air dumpsites near the town, hungry elephants forage for food, but find plastic instead. Consumed indiscriminately, this plastic doesn’t pass through their bodies. It builds up and then it kills. A tragic and completely preventable affliction. 

And it’s why, when we learnt our friends in Zimbabwe were launching an exciting new venture to combat it - we knew Bonamy Travel had to get involved. 

Introducing Ele-Collection: A Movement Born From a Moment

Years ago, famed painter and conservationist Larry Norton and his friend Simon Teede had a life-altering encounter with an elephant deep in the Zambezi National Park, a charge that nearly ended in tragedy. That brush with mortality became a call to action.

Simon, along with Larry’s son Ben and their friend Rainer, went on to found Ele-Collection, a grassroots conservation initiative in Victoria Falls with a mission to clean up the environment: not just for the sake of beauty, but for the sake of survival.

In a harrowing condition that has newly been coined, plasticosis, the consumed plastic causes inflammation throughout the digestive tract. Over time, this persistent and recurrent inflammation causes tissue to become scarred and deformed resulting in severe stomach damage and poor nutrient absorption. All this in addition to the toxic slew of dangerous chemicals like phthalates, BPAs and dioxins that are released when the ingested plastic breaks down. As enormous endocrine disruptors, these chemicals not only poison but result in massive reproductive, behavioural, developmental and immune response issues.

This condition was first documented in seabirds and only recently has drawn parallels across a much wider range of species than previously understood, yet underreported due to lack of post-mortem analysis in wild populations. 

A terrifying plight of our modern, single-use, convenience driven world, that the plastic pollution problem is now so pervasive that even elephants deep in the African bush are dying - strangled from the inside. 

Ele-Collection has created a comprehensive solution for plastic waste management, designed for a total clean-up, removing all 7 types of plastic waste from the environment - no need for timely separating and sorting. It stands out as the sole recycling solution in Zimbabwe capable of processing all types of plastic waste and transforming it, using Plazrok™ technology, to create a lightweight composite aggregate. An exciting innovation that provides numerous concrete and building advantages as well as an eco-friendly alternative to traditionally quarried stone. 

Unlike many community clean-up efforts that rely on temporary donor funding or manual sorting of waste, Ele-Collection offers a scalable model that integrates waste management, conservation, and circular economy principles - positioning it as a prototype for future conservation-linked waste solutions across Africa.

The initiative promises a multitude of benefits, including economic empowerment of communities, prevention of human-wildlife conflict, conservation of wildlife and pristine ecological landscapes and mitigation of climate change effects linked to plastic pollution. By removing plastic and transforming how waste is managed, Ele-Collection reduces fatal intersections between wildlife and people. 

Plastic is a silent killer, but now, with the right tools, plastic can also build and Ele-Collection is closing the plastic loop. 

What Ele-Collection Is Doing (And How You’re Part of It)

Bonamy Travel proudly funds this life-saving mission - through donations from everyone who travels with us and also through a percentage of our own net profit. Every $1 we give removes 1kg of deadly plastic from the ecosystem; how’s that for immediate, visible and lasting impact! Every time you travel with us, you’re directly contributing to the health and future of Zimbabwe’s elephants and ecosystems. 

Here’s what our support has made possible so far (June 2025):

• 6.1 tonnes of plastic removed from wildlife areas, streets, and waterways.

• 36 women employed for a month, earning fair wages and building dignified livelihoods.

• 17.69 tonnes of CO₂, emissions avoided, equivalent to the work of 212 trees

• A Plazrok plastic recycling machine has just landed in Victoria Falls which is transforming waste into eco-friendly construction materials and helping build a circular, sustainable economy.

We work closely with the Ele-Collection team to track measurable outputs - plastic tonnage, CO₂ values, employment numbers - and share these figures transparently with our travellers and partners. Our goal is to ensure every trip with Bonamy contributes to visible, verified conservation outcomes.

To Travel With Bonamy Is To Save Elephants

We design extraordinary safaris and care deeply for the places we send our guests. We believe every operator has a responsibility to protect, preserve and travel lightly through these spaces and we are immensely proud to throw our full support behind this venture, because what’s the point of seeing an elephant in the wild if we’re not fighting for its future?

Ele-Collection isn’t just a local solution - it’s a model with the potential to be replicated in other high-biodiversity, high-tourism regions grappling with unmanaged waste. By supporting this project in its infancy, Bonamy Travel is helping build proof-of-concept for scalable conservation innovation.

Travel with Bonamy and you’re already a part of this tremendous story, restoring and protecting Africa’s wilderness and all those animals who call it home. You’re investing in real change and helping turn plastic into possibility, waste into wages and harm into hope. 

There’s no substitute for seeing this work in person - meeting the people behind it, understanding the complexities of these conservation challenges, and witnessing the change through your own eyes.