Turning plastic waste into gold

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There's a growing economy around post-consumer PET bottles that has a bearing on several different areas of life and business in SA, including entrepreneurship and job creation. In other words, used PET bottles have value.

At the centre of producer responsibility and the recycling of PET is the nonprofit PET Recycling Company (Petco), which was established in 2004 to represent the country's PET plastic industry's efforts to selfregulate the life cycle of PET. Financed by a voluntary levy paid by converters on PET resin purchased, and grants from brand owners, resin producers and retailers, Petco's primary task, says co-founder of the organisation and CEO, Cheri Scholtz, is to get the equilibrium right. "Our business model depends on achieving the balance between several undertakings," she says. "We help facilitate the collection of product, but also need to ensure there's sufficient capacity to reprocess it. Uses for recycled product are also crucial to sustaining the cycle. We have to be able to sell it in the open market at a discounted price to virgin material. For the model to be successful, it has to operate like any other business."

It hasn't been easy - particularly with oil prices plummeting in recent years. (Raw materials for PET are derived from crude oil.) Even so, Petco has topped its own goals. In 2015, 1.7-billion PET bottles were collected across SA meaning 4.7-million bottles were recycled every day. This was up 15% on the previous year. For the first time, Petco recycled more bottles than went into landfill with a recycling rate of 52% - 2% higher than the organisation's goal. It estimates PET recycling creates income for about 50,000 people, and skills and entrepreneurship opportunities for many others.

The recent expansion of Extrupet and Mpact's recycling plants, which makes it possible to recycle PET bottles into new PET bottles for the carbonated soft drinks sector, means Petco has also achieved its ultimate objective of realising a "closedloop packaging supply chain". SA is one of just 24 countries to supply recycled PET content to bottlers of Coca-Cola.

Incremental change, says Scholtz, has been a key strategy for Petco since onset.

"We realised our model would have to grow gradually. Knowing that companies would be reluctant to invest in equipment and plants before they were assured of receiving feedstock and that it would take time to sensitise the industry, we've worked to five and 10 year plans," she says. "We've not only worked with collectors and recyclers (and campaigned to increase consumer awareness), we've also liaised with brand owners and designers to help them manufacture product that is compatible with recycling. We also help develop products that use secondary PET material, including food grade packaging."

Among Petco's ambitions is to grow job opportunities among collectors and recyclers.

Source: Business Day