Around Gauteng, sustainability champions are quietly working to clean up their communities – all while creating much-needed income opportunities in the waste collection and recycling sector. Now, their efforts – and those of their counterparts around the country – are being recognised.
A newly released docu-series titled Sorted, directed by veteran actor-director Louw Venter, showcases inspiring sustainability advocates. The online series features actress Lindiwe Dim – a self-declared “concerned consumer” learning about the circular economy and how she can help it grow.
In addition to being featured in the series, the subjects have been honoured for their work by Petco, South Africa’s longest-standing producer responsibility organisation (PRO), which oversees collection and recycling efforts of post-consumer packaging throughout the country. The Petco Awards span various aspects of the collection and recycling sector – including innovation, community and women empowerment, entrepreneurial, municipal and environmental awareness education.
Aimed at revealing the untold stories of these entrepreneurs, researchers, environmental educators and women empowerment advocates, Sorted unpacks the significance of the collection and recycling sector for consumers – as well as how consumers can pitch in and make a difference.
“There are people who are designing products so they can be recycled. There are people collecting and sorting these recyclables. There are people buying these recyclables,” explains Dim in the premier of Sorted. “The money changing hands means that people can eat and communities can flourish.”
In Johannesburg, Dim meets the founder of Whole Earth Recycling, Carmen Jordaan. A joint recipient of this year’s Petco Best Community Recycling Initiative award, Jordaan is recognised for helping pioneer kerbside recycling collections in South Africa. The company employs over 50 people, 30 of whom comprise previously unemployed and disadvantaged women. It benefits an estimated 50,000 people in the community.
Also in Johannesburg, Dim learns from one of Africa’s largest and most advanced recyclers of PET bottle materials, Extrupet.
“For us, [packaging] design is the starting point and the centrepoint if products are to be [recyclable and] circular in any stage of their life,” Extrupet joint managing director Chandru Wadhwani tells Dim.
Dim speaks to Petco Design for Circularity award recipient, CCL Africa. Shivern Reddy, a business development director at the company, explains the innovation behind CCL’s EcoFloat® shrink sleeve technology – among the first recyclable shrink sleeve solutions for the PET bottle market in the country.
Reddy tells Dim how, in being able to separate PET bottles’ shrink sleeves from the bottles themselves during the recycling process, the circular economy is enabled. That’s because the recycled PET bottles can be recycled back into new PET bottles, free of being contaminated by the shrink sleeves during the recycling process, as was the case in the past.
“CCL has been developing a polyolefin film… which allows for complete separation [of the shrink sleeve from the PET bottle being recycled],” he says.
In the season finale of Sorted, Dim reflects on her journey, saying: “There is a whole sub-sector of society here who designs for recycling, reclaims waste, sells it to buy-back centres and makes material that makes new packaging products, all while adding value to people’s lives, communities and our country in the process.
“If we all play our individual parts, we can make it work.”
Petco CEO Cheri Scholtz said she was proud of the docu-series. She said Petco’s vision for the series was “to highlight the role consumers can play in the collection and sorting chain for the SMMEs and waste pickers working in this sector”.
[*For more on this story and how more heroes are cleaning up SA, read the addendum, further down]
Catch the nine-episode docu-series on YouTube by clicking here.