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Recycling preserves the environment and creates sustainable livelihoods

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Published: Thursday, 18 June 2015 12:50

Mpact Recycling, the biggest paper recycler in South Africa, is providing opportunities for an increasing number of South Africans to preserve the environment for future generations through recycling, while simultaneously creating sustainable livelihoods.

John Hunt, managing director of Mpact Recycling, says this is being achieved by creating a demand for recycled material that effectively enables recycling where it might not otherwise have been possible. The result is a mutually beneficial relationship that ultimately benefits the environment and creates small to medium enterprises at the same time.

Mpact Recycling has a strong recycling heritage dating back 40 years, when it was part of the Mondi Group. Today Mpact Recycling collects approximately 450,000 tonnes of recovered paper per annum, and supplies this recovered fibre to the group’s paper mills for processing into recycled-based cartonboard and containerboard for sale to South Africa’s packaging industry.

“We’re in the business of sustainability through our active contribution to job creation, economic value and environmental stewardship,” Hunt says. “The recycling industry contributes to the employment of more than 100,000 South Africans, which supports the sustainability of job creation in our country. In addition, we actively create opportunities for people to start their own recycling businesses. To date, we’ve helped set up over 40 buy-back centres, where traders deliver waste paper for payment. We also buy additional material from independent dealers throughout the country.”

Paper is collected kilogram by kilogram and piece by piece. The tonnages are vitally important and Mpact Recycling’s educational programmes play a big role in informing South Africans from all walks of life about the difference they can make by recycling. The company focuses on providing the mechanisms that make recycling easy – from houses, to schools, to offices, to complexes, businesses and more.

“Every one of us has the potential to make a difference simply by separating and sorting our recyclables,” Hunt concludes. “From there, recyclables move to the trolley pushers who sell them onto places like buy-back centres, or they go into paper banks at schools and community centres, or out onto the kerbside for collection in certain areas.”

The “Queen of Robertville” One of the most impressive success stories to come out of Mpact Recycling’s sustainability endeavours is a flourishing recycling business in the industrial suburb of Robertville, Roodepoort. This well established buyback centre is testament to the determination of one woman to support herself and her children in the face of a decade-long struggle to find any kind of stable job.

The Robertville Buyback Centre, owned and run by Queen Phashe-Boikanyo, has five full-time employees and is supplied by 15 collectors with trollies, who comb the surrounding industrial areas for recyclable material.

These days Phashe-Boikanyo processes about 100 tons of waste paper and cardboard every month and sells it on to Mpact Recycling. The recent addition of a baling machine enables the business to process greater volumes of waste paper. Baling, which involves compressing waste into manageable blocks, also reduces the cost of transporting the paper to the mills where it is recycled.

Phashe-Boikanyo says it’s taken her 12 years of perseverance to get to her recycling business to this level. Over this period, profit from the business has enabled her to support her four children through school and university.

“My eldest daughter is now a pharmacist at Leratong Hospital, and the next daughter is studying at Wits to become a dentist,” says Phashe-Boikanyo. She has similar high hopes for her other two children who are still at school.

It wasn’t that long ago that Phashe-Boikanyo was pushing a wheelbarrow along townships streets as she collected used food tins and drinks cans. At the time, this foray into recycling was driven by the dire need to survive and support four small children as a single parent.

“It was a very tough life. But then one day I read in the City Press about how some people were getting assistance to start a recycling business. I thought that would be a good idea for me to try,” she says.

She approached Mpact Recycling (then known as Mondi Recycling) and was helped to find a location and provided with training in the early days. Now, from her site office in a converted container, Phashe-Boikanyo oversees and manages daily operations of collecting, sorting and baling. She notes, however, that the recycling business has become very competitive in recent years.

“People understand that you can get money for collecting things for recycling, so it’s much more of a challenge to find material nearby. However, we hope more people will help us by letting us take their waste for recycling.”

For further information on Mpact Recycling and recycling, visit www.mpactrecycling.co.za or call them on toll free number - 0800 022 112.