Handmade · One-of-one · Zero waste

YourTurn.

A backgammon board built from what was headed for landfill. Cut, made and trimmed by hand — no two ever the same.

Register Interest Read the Story
Rolling dice over a YourTurn board on the rocks, mountains and ocean behind.
Why we exist

Waste, made worth keeping

YourTurn started as a project from the UCT Genesis programme, built around a simple problem: textile waste is piling up across the continent, and almost none of it gets a second look. We intercept curtain scraps, clothing off-cuts and leftover fabric before they hit a landfill, and turn them into something people actually want to hold onto.

Every board is cut, matched and hand-stitched by our NGO partner, The Sewing Café, in Masiphumelele — turning waste into real skills and income, not just a good story on a label. Made to be played barefoot, no wifi required.

A pile of finished YourTurn boards, no two the same.
40–50% of textile production ends up as waste
70 tonnes of textile waste generated daily, across Africa
<1% of that waste is recycled or repurposed

No single board is the same — and that's exactly how it should be.

02 — Brand core

The game plan

Three things every board has to be. If it doesn't hit one of these, it isn't YourTurn.

Zero Waste

Off-cuts and bottle tops. Nothing new, nothing landfilled.

Community Upliftment

Cut, matched and hand-stitched by our NGO partner in Masiphumelele.

Nostalgia & Play

No wifi required. Just sun, friends, and sand in the box.

The Boards

One-of-one, by design

Every board is cut from whatever fabric came through the door that week, so no two boards ever look the same. What's below is a preview of what's coming: real boards, real fabric, out in the places they're meant to be played.

Holding a YourTurn board up over the tidal rocks.
A YourTurn board laid out in the grass among wildflowers.
A YourTurn board laid flat on the sand, golden hour light.
A YourTurn board clipped to a wire fence, railway and ocean behind it.
A YourTurn board on the table at a pizza dinner with friends.
A YourTurn board on the rocks with its recycled bottle-cap pieces and shells.

First batch made, sold, and already out in the wild — retailing at R550. More on the way.

03 — The pieces

The pieces began as bottle tops.

Collected off bar floors and braai tables, sorted by colour and pressed back into play. Thirty pieces a board. None of them new.

Bottle tops sorted by colour and brand, ready to be pressed into playing pieces.
Jars of collected bottle tops, sorted before becoming YourTurn playing pieces.
Support

Help us make more of these

We're raising funds through BackaBuddy to get more boards off the cutting table and into people's hands, funding fabric, thread and machine time at our NGO partner's workshop in Masiphumelele. Every contribution helps fund real skills training and income for the team who makes each board.

Support on BackaBuddy

Every board is cut, matched and hand-stitched by The Sewing Café, our NGO partner in Masiphumelele.

The Sewing Café workshop in Masiphumelele, where every YourTurn board is made.
A maker at The Sewing Café hand-stitching a YourTurn board.
A YourTurn team member going over a board with a maker at the cutting table.

Masiphumelele, Cape Town.

Let's play again
Get one first

Be first in line

The first batch sold out fast. Leave your name and email and you'll be first to know when the next batch is ready, before we post about it anywhere else.

What you'll get

An email the moment boards are ready to order, first access before we open it up publicly, and no spam in between.

Trouble seeing the form? Follow along below in the meantime.

The YourTurn team at the UCT Genesis Expo, boards on the table.
Who we are

Six students, one waste stream.

We're a UCT Genesis team — we raised the capital, found the fabric and built the thing, start to finish, in Cape Town.

We launched at the UCT Genesis Expo to a strong response — a full stand, boards changing hands all afternoon, and more interest than we had boards to show. It was the first real proof that this isn't just a student project. People want to play.

Come say hi

Follow the boards being made

Behind-the-scenes fabric collecting, boards in progress, and boards out in the wild.

Stitching a YourTurn board on a Singer sewing machine.