The South African food packaging industry can make an enormous contribution to the country’s recycling capabilities and simultane- ously grow its economy, packaging solutions provider Damax Sebenza Pack MD Brian Lovell tells Engineering News.
He cites that at Damax Sebenza Pack’s 3 500 m2 manufacturing plant, in Roodepoort, Johannesburg, the company separates all of its leftover materials, whether it is a cooldrink can or material from the manufacturing process.
“In addition, we are committed to saving electricity and we have been changing all our lighting to low-voltage lights throughout the plant since October 2013. Our manufacturing plant was also retrofitted, which is amounting to a saving of up to 30% in electricity consumption,” says Lovell.
He further notes that according to the European Environment Agency, recycling rates are the highest in Austria with 63%, followed by Germany at 62%, Belgium at 58%, Netherlands at 51% and Switzerland at 51%.
“Improved recycling rates are primarily owed to trends in recycling materials, with less progress in biowaste recycling. Although South Africa does not yet feature on the highest recycling list, there is an increased awareness of the importance of recycling. As a result, many companies are diligently working towards increasing their recycling rate,” he explains.
Lovell maintains that there is room for improvement and that collectively, the local packaging industry can make a great difference in increasing the country’s recycling rate.
He says packaging companies can, for instance, show commitment through initiating recycling programmes, providing recycling training for employees and implementing a waste separation system at their factories.
Lovell highlights that, paired with government’s recycling programmes, activities of the informal recycling sector – whereby unemployed people, also referred to as reclaimers, separate and collect recyclable waste from dump sites for a fee – have resulted in an income source for many unskilled people and, thereby, contributed to the reduction of the unemployment rate.
“Recycling is a massive industry in this country and informal recyclers can make up to R500 a day. Many companies are going to dump sites and buying those waste products from these recyclers. Dump sites often have scales that recyclers use to determine a price. This is enhancing and formalising the industry,” he details.
Lovell adds that although South Africa is making headway in the recycling of material polyvinyl chloride (PVC), ensuring that polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is also recycled remains a challenge, as products made from PET are difficult to separate using only the naked eye and informal recyclers often find it difficult to know in which recycling bag to put them.
“It is, however, comforting to see industry’s commitment to changing this. For instance, one of our retail clients, Woolworths, is driving a major initiative to use up to 30% recycled PET, or R-PET, in its food and beverage packaging,” he adds.
Lovell says that although Damax Sebenza Pack does not directly export its packaging, some of it is being sold in the rest of Africa, as some of the food products for which the company provides packaging are destined for markets outside South Africa.
Damax Sebenza Pack prod- uces and provides plastic packaging for numerous products, such as food, cosmetics, and gardening and industrial applications at its manufacturing plant. The company processes 75 t/m of a variety of plastics, which include PET, PVC, polypropylene and high-impact polystyrene.