Clean break — Dunoon suit salesman swaps glad rags to becomes successful entrepreneurial bin cleaner

For ten years Siyanda Nohashe used to sell South African design suits. But in 2018, at the age of 30, he quit his job and swapped the suits he wore for a pair of blue overalls. Nohashe started a business cleaning municipal wheelie bins.

He says he wanted to earn more and work for himself. “I resigned. I said to my boss I want to start my own business,” says Nohashe.

Initially, he thought of opening a car wash, but “everyone was doing it”.

“I wanted to do something unique,” he said.

With no capital and only a 20-litre bucket and a broom, he started cleaning municipal wheelie bins after they’d been emptied on refuse collection day for people living in Dunoon.

Charging just R5 a bin when he started, he soon had 30 clients.

But there was social stigma to overcome. He said people had seen him in suits, and now he was wearing dirty overalls and they were quick to judge him. Some people thought he was a drug addict. It “killed me emotionally”, he said.