What do you get when you mix river rubbish, relentless hope, and a South African woman with a never-say-die attitude? You get Tarryn Johnston… and her inspiring story is this week’s podcast feature.
South Africa (06 August 2025) – This week on Good Things with Brent Lindeque, we sit down with someone who doesn’t just talk about change… she gets knee-deep in it, quite literally.
Tarryn Johnston, founder of Hennops Revival, is the kind of South African whose passion makes you want to roll up your sleeves and join in. What started as a weekend clean-up after a devastating flood in 2019 has turned into a full-blown environmental and community movement. And this week, we get to hear her incredible story first-hand on the podcast.
“We all share this water,” she says, a simple sentence that’s become the heartbeat of her mission.
Tarryn grew up beside the Hennops River in Centurion. When the 2019 flood revealed the layers of waste clogging the riverbeds, she felt a fire ignite, partly sparked by her daughter’s wish for a cleaner river. What followed was nothing short of extraordinary. Hennops Revival didn’t just pick up a few bags of rubbish. They’ve now removed over 5 million kilograms of waste from the river… that’s the weight of about 1,000 elephants. More than 8,000 job opportunities have been created for locals and 39,000 volunteer hours have been logged. And the most beautiful part? Many of those involved weren’t just helping clean the river, they were finding purpose, dignity and income too.
Tarryn’s story is one of grit, community and constant innovation. She’s always asking “what’s next?”… even when ankle-deep in river sludge. Her latest idea? Turning river plastic into paint. Yes, you read that right. Eco-friendly, fireproof, waterproof, rustproof paint… made from plastic pollution.
“In one of our experiments, we had some surprising results, we turned river waste into paint!” she told us with a grin.
And now she’s working with labs and potential partners to scale the project, turning trash into treasure, while creating jobs and protecting the environment. Imagine a future where your bridge or roof is coated in a primer made from what once floated down a polluted stream.
But more than the numbers or the science, this story is about hope. It’s about what happens when one person says, “enough,” and brings others along for the journey. It’s about South Africans showing up, again and again, to protect what’s ours, together.
And it’s about Tarryn… a mom, an activist, and an accidental inventor, reminding us all that small actions, repeated often, can shift the course of a river.
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