PETCO
AWARDS
For their noteworthy achievements and contributions to the PET recycling sector during 2021, PETCO recognised nine recipients in the following seven categories:
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND AWARENESS INITIATIVE
This category recognises initiatives led by organisations or individuals who stimulate innovative ideas that increase recycling and waste management, and those public-facing campaigns that have successfully addressed a recycling challenge (such as waste and the waste hierarchy, anti-littering awareness, reducing reliance on landfill, increasing plastic recycling, boosting reuse, or reducing waste- generating behaviour among South African consumers).
WINNER
Isphepho Enviro Ambassadors
(KwaZulu-Natal)
Isphepho Enviro Ambassadors aim to achieve visible impact by encouraging public participation in resolving or reducing environmental problems.
The team aims to solve the challenges of unemployment by providing opportunities for youth development by making use of knowledgeable and passionate graduates and students in accelerating public participation, environmental awareness, recycling, and research. They are involved in running a buy-back centre, implementing door-to-door awareness campaigns, schools waste management awareness campaigns (currently at 20 schools), awareness among holidaymakers and beachgoers, informal traders and businesses, and facilitating and attending clean-up campaigns in various areas of Durban. The programme benefits 65 registered community collectors who earn an income from selling recyclables, 25 salaried staff members, and over 60 families who have benefited through collecting recyclables.
TOP WOMAN
IN RECYCLING
This category recognises the importance of women in leadership, specifically within the recycling sector in South Africa, and aims to grow the number of female role models for future leaders in the sector.
WINNER
Lisa Steenkamp,
Westworld Recycling (Gauteng)
Westworld Recycling started operating on premises in Roodepoort in June 2020 in the middle of a recession after the national lockdown.
Lisa has grown her business from a small recycling buy-back centre with a handful of employees to a fully-fledged, still growing buy-back centre with many more employees and increasing monthly tonnages of PET and other materials collected. She is focused not only on growing her business, but also on assisting the “foot soldiers”, as she calls waste pickers, to improve their collections and lives. She does this by handing out PPE and having small holiday celebrations where she hands out food, and by offering transport for the collection of recyclables from various sites. Lisa’s major aim is to keep our country clean and create informal jobs in the process, thus turning trash to treasure.
BEST COMMUNITY
RECYCLING INITIATIVE
This category recognises an individual or organisation whose ingenuity and perseverance have created and sustained successful business ventures or community projects in the PET collection or recycling industry that directly benefit and uplift the communities within which they operate.
JOINT WINNER
Litter4tokens NPC
(KwaDukuza, Etekweni, Hillcrest, Port Elizabeth, East London, Richards Bay, Mpumalanga and Estcourt)
The Litter4tokens NPC and Trash4tokens campaign aims to instil pride and cleanliness by putting respect back into communities, encouraging hard work, and employing and educating the nation.
The programme encourages people to collect as many bags of litter (including recyclables) as they can in exchange for food tokens to redeem at the token shop. One bag is worth one token and no money changes hands.
Litter4tokens NPC not only creates jobs but also instils pride in the environment and the cleanliness of their communities, while uplifting people through education about recycling. The campaign has prevented over 666 500 bags of ocean-bound litter from reaching the marine environment and fed more than 133 000 people, with over 1 256 families benefiting every month.
JOINT WINNER
Smanga Mthembu,
Umphakathi Recyclers
(Gauteng)
Umphakathi Recyclers is a buy-back centre that buys recyclables from the community.
After an elderly woman brought her recyclables and broke down about being unable to afford a funeral for her son, Smanga came up with the idea to launch the Umphakathi Recyclers Burial Scheme. The scheme enables community members to bring in recyclables in cumulative exchange for items that will provide their loved ones with a dignified burial. Smanga rents out equipment including tents, tables, chairs, gas stoves, pots, mobile toilets, a mobile kitchen, plates, etc. The initiative currently employs six people, and the burial scheme covers 438 households.
PET-REPRENEUR
This category recognises an individual whose entrepreneurial insight, ingenuity and perseverance have created and sustained a successful, growing business venture in the PET collection or recycling industry.
WINNER
Ahmed Scholtz, The Artell
(North West)
Ahmed Scholtz has a passion for recycling and waste management, and this passion led him to open the first registered buy-back centre in Mahikeng in 1987.
The business, The Artell, aims to recycle all recyclable waste materials and pay collectors market-related prices to sustain and promote collection for recycling in Mahikeng. Ahmed goes the extra mile – not only has he taught his customers how to sort and collect but he will go and do the collections if they are not able to come to him. Ahmed believes the most important element of The Artell’s success is the workforce and collectors. He currently employs 15 people and has 1200 customers on the system. The Artell processes an average monthly turnover of 200 tonnes of recyclables, 10 to 15 tonnes of which is PET.
DESIGN FOR
CIRCULARITY
This category celebrates products that exemplify the best in sustainability and have been designed with careful consideration of resources in mind. As such, those products that incorporate recycled PET content, or that have improved the products’ compatibility with recycling infrastructure in South Africa, are considered.
WINNER
PepsiCo Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)
(Gauteng)
PepsiCo Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has committed to including rPET in all PET beverage bottles within the PepsiCo business.
The trials kicked off in 2021 and, from October to December 2021, the business went commercial with the inclusion of 20% rPET in all two-litre Pepsi Carbonated Soft Drinks (CSD) beverages. Based on volumes produced within this period, a total of 79 tonnes of recycled material was used to produce the volume requirements.
RECYCLING PARTNERSHIP
GAMECHANGER
This category recognises partnerships, including government (municipal, provincial or national), regulatory agencies, community organisations and private industry, that have successfully implemented game-changing initiatives, policies or programmes that advance recycling and sustainability in South Africa.
JOINT WINNER
Safripol (Pty) Ltd.
(Gauteng)
Safripol (Pty) Ltd. is a polymer producer and marketer that has implemented many impactful sustainability projects to advance waste collection and recycling in South Africa.
To achieve their objectives, the projects have been run in partnership with various organisations, such as PETCO, Green Corridors NPC, Tri-ecotours, Isphepho Ambassadors, Bophelo Recycling, and the Johanna Road informal settlement community.
Their initiatives include awareness campaigns, implementation of litterbooms and material recovery facilities (MRF), in-office recycling programmes, bulk bag sponsorship, equipment support for SMMEs and clean-up campaigns. In 2021, Safripol collected approximately 26.6 tonnes of recyclables together with their partners. This includes 19.3 tonnes of post-consumer waste, which was diverted from Safripol’s separation-at-source programme, 3.4 tonnes of ocean-bound waste collected from the Johanna Road MRF, 2.7 tonnes collected from litterbooms, and an additional 1.2 tonnes collected during clean-ups and community projects.
JOINT WINNER
Masekhethele: A joint venture between Siyavuma Foundation and Thinavhuuo Recycling
(Limpopo)
Masekhethele supports women and creates jobs for waste pickers who source recyclables that are transformed into high-quality products by sewing groups, entrepreneurs, and soon-to-be-trained seamstresses from Phalaborwa.
Over and above the income earned through sourcing recyclables, 10% of all profits goes directly to the 350 waste pickers of Phalaborwa. The programme offers technical and business training, facilitates work opportunities, and runs a range of sustainability programmes, including the development of self-sustaining food gardens. The partnership between the Siyavuma and Thinavhuuo Recyclers was built on the shared belief in uplifting lives and job creation. Thinavhuuo represents the hands at the landfills, while Siyavuma is about the transformation of recyclables, training, and marketing. The programme has 66 full-time company employees and benefits approximately 150 657 people.
WORTH IN
YOUR WASTE
This category recognises one specific reclaimer or a group of reclaimers who have gone above and beyond to keep South Africa clean and keep valuable recyclable materials out of landfills, while making a living for themselves. This person or group will also have worked to change the negative perception that many people have of reclaimers.
WINNER
The Zonda Insila Programme
(Mpumalanga)
The Zonda Insila Programme (ZIP) is a programme for those whose main objective is to save the environment from harmful pollution, littering and illegal dumping.
The participants collect waste, sort it and package recyclable material to sell, generating an income for themselves while creating a cleaner environment. These participants have become their own bosses, running these recycling cooperatives with the support of the Mpumalanga Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Land and Environmental Affairs (DARDLEA), and assistance from several private companies and local municipalities.
The programme was launched in Breyton in the Msukaligwa Local Municipality in March 2019, with only four projects. It has since grown to a total of 14 projects, encouraging communities, and young people in particular, to see waste as the new wealth.
ZIP participants have an important role to play in communities by clearing illegal dumping and littering. During that process, they separate residuals from recyclables, and sort waste according to the specification of their clients, the recyclers. With the growing interest and number of informal waste pickers, there is no doubt that ZIP is encouraging more young people to shift their thinking towards waste.