Recycling company Petco’s largest contracted recycler, Extrupet, officially launched its new Phoenix polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle-to-bottle recycling plant in Germiston this month. The plant will produce an additional 14 000 t/y of PET resin for the plastics packaging industry.

Recycling postconsumer bottles into new PET bottles would help ensure the long-term viability of PET plastics recycling in South Africa, said Extrupet chairperson Laju Chanrai during the launch, adding that the plant was the first in Africa to use Coca-Cola- approved technology to recycle bottles for carbonated soft drink bottles.

With a capital investment of R75-million in the plant, it was set to create an additional 15 000 income opportunities for the informal sector, which had been envisioned to collect about 22 000 t of additional plastic material to supply the plant.

“In so doing, landfill space amounting to 136 400 m³/y would be saved at full capacity and carbon savings would amount to 33 000 t/y at full capacity,” he added.

Petco CEO Cheri Scholtz said that, since 2004, the collection and recycling of post-consumer PET bottles had increased from 9 840 t in 2004 to 64 000 t in 2014. “Owing to this, we have increased our target from 16% to 49% of recycled postconsumer beverage PET. This is significant, following a yearly increase of 6 % to 8% in bottle consumption by consumers.”

Petco aimed to increase its recycling target to 50% this year. Also, Scholtz noted that initiatives such as the plant launch would contribute to the industry being able to reach a recycling target of 70% by 2022, which was an estimated increase of 170 000 t of PET bottles being recycled.

After her tour of the plant, Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa indicated that the approval of the technology used at the plant by Coca-Cola affirmed the company’s commitment to running its business in an environmentally sustainable way.

The Minister also stated that the launch of the plant addressed two of the National Waste Management Strategy goals.

The first was that the plant promoted waste minimisation at landfills through reuse, recycling and recovery of waste, with the target being to direct 25% of waste to recyclables by 2016. The second was to increase the contribution of the waste sector to grow the green economy, with the target being to create 69 000 jobs in the sector and an additional 2 600 small, medium-sized and microenterprises by 2016.

Moreover, the Minister stressed that companies should continue considering waste management programmes that would address poverty, unemployment, inequality and environmental sustainability.

“Today, as we launch this plant, Petco and Extrupet have led the way in providing sustainable ways to mitigate waste, which is an example of initiatives that other companies should follow. Hopefully, more initiatives of this nature will be implemented by different companies across the country as we continue to wage war against waste,” she stressed.

Scholtz indicated that Petco had invested R235-million in support of Extrupet to date, and had also ensured the payment of R1.2-billion to PET recyclers for the wages of the collectors.