Photo: Laura Lezza/Getty Images
When Quinette Goosen started the Uitenhage Recycling Mula Swop-Shop Project in 2015, she remembers boasting there would be 20 such projects in the town within five years.
Through the Mula project, which she cofounded, about 300 children bring plastic waste and cardboard to a local hall, where it is weighed and exchanged for credits. The children exchange these Mula credits for food, toiletries, stationery and toys — but most often it is for food, she said.
The project’s aim is to clean up the environment and alleviate poverty. By 2019, children and their families had collected more than 45 tonnes of polyethylene terephthalate plastic (used in fibres for clothing and in liquid and food containers), 25 tonnes of cardboard and eight tonnes of non-recyclable items.
But the financial burden of the Mula project, which clinched recycling company Petco’s Public Campaign of the Year in 2018, was too high to run it weekly or expand the model elsewhere.
“We survive completely on the goodwill of the broader community and donations, and unfortunately because of Covid, we got a few closed fists,” said Goosen. “After Covid, we started with the recycling again … but now we don’t have enough money to do it every week, and we’ve ended up doing it once a month.
“I thought the recycling part will bring in enough money to sponsor the food output — I need R8 000 for a Mula day for food — but compensation for recycling is pathetic; you get five cents for a kilogramme of plastic.”
Still, for Goosen, the waste removal concept is the only one she knows of that motivates everyone to get involved.
“We concentrate on children because we feel we can still teach a child something, but the whole family gets involved and benefits. They all collect the waste and bring it to the Mula days. If you see the truck with a trailer coming to fetch the rubbish and they have to come two or three times, that’s success.”
Charles Muller, of Tufflex Plastic Products, told how its plastic recycling facility in Germiston, also produces an extensive range of recycled plastic timber from scrap plastic including “impossible to recycle toothpaste tubes”, various mixed plastics and multilayer substrates. It is one of the few in the country that uses unrecyclable materials that would otherwise have to be landfilled.
“The core of the business is plastic recycling and taking dirty plastic from landfill or wherever and reinventing it and putting it back into material that can be used again. The second part of the business is that we take scrap plastic and make plastic timber. We make a range of different timber that is used for things like pallets, furniture, owl boxes, fencing and so on … We play an integral role in the circular economy, we’re the link between the waste pickers and landfill and so on and getting the material back into a usable form,” he explained.
Lorren de Kock, the project manager for circular plastics economy at the World Wildlife Fund-SA (WWF-SA) said a South African consume 29kg of plastic a year and “when it comes to ingestion there are estimates that globally we consume about 4.1g of microplastics per week”.
To slash plastic pollution by 80% globally by 2040, a new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) suggests first eliminating unnecessary plastics to reduce the size of the problem. It calls for three market shifts — to reuse, recycle and reorient and diversify plastic products.
Unep’s report is intended to help governments negotiate a new, global treaty to end plastic pollution, with the second round of negotiations taking place in Paris from 29 May.
In the foreword, Unep’s executive director, Inger Andersen, wrote how plastics contribute positively to society. “There is, however, a dark side: the way we produce, use and dispose of plastics is polluting ecosystems, creating risks for human and animal health and destabilising the climate.”
She said only an integrated, systemic shift from a linear to a circular economy can keep plastics out of ecosystems and people’s bodies, and in the economy.
The report finds that promoting reuse options, including refillable bottles, bulk dispensers, deposit-return-schemes and packaging take-back schemes, can reduce 30% of plastic pollution by 2040. To realise its potential, governments need to develop a strong business case for the reuse of plastic.
It said reducing plastic pollution by an additional 20% by 2040 can be achieved if recycling becomes a stable profitable venture. “Removing fossil fuels subsidies, enforcing design guidelines to enhance recyclability, and other measures would increase the share of economically recyclable plastics from 21% to 50%.”
On reorienting and diversifying products, The report found that the replacement of products such as plastic wrappers, sachets and takeaway items with products made from materials such as paper can deliver an additional 17% decrease in plastic pollution.
Even with these measures, 100 million tonnes of plastics from single-use and short-lived products will still need to be safely dealt with annually by 2040 — together with a significant legacy of existing plastic pollution. “This can be addressed by setting and implementing design and safety standards for disposing of non-recyclable plastic waste, and by making manufacturers responsible for products shedding microplastics, among others,” the report noted.
But Graham Forbes, the global plastics campaign lead at Greenpeace USA, said the report fails to address the role of plastic production in creating the plastics and climate crisis. “Any plan that still results in 100 million tons of plastic pollution per year, 17 years from now, is inadequate.
“While the report recognises the importance of reuse, and a just transition for workers, especially waste pickers, it largely ignores the potentially fatal problems associated with refining, use, incineration, landfilling, and recycling of plastics. A treaty that does not cap and reduce plastic production will fail to deliver what the people need, justice demands, and the planet requires.”
Unep’s report found the shift to a circular economy would result in $1.27 trillion in savings, considering costs and recycling revenues. A further $3.25 trillion would be saved from avoided externalities such as health problems, the effect on climate, air pollution, marine ecosystem degradation and litigation-related costs.
This transition could also see a net increase of 700 000 jobs by 2040, mostly in low-income countries, “significantly improving the livelihoods of millions of workers in informal settings”.
The investment needed for the overall transition is significant at $65 billion a year. But this is below the projected spending if the shift is not undertaken of $113 billion a year. The report found a five-year delay may cause an increase of 80 million tonnes of plastic pollution by 2040.
It noted that with regulation to ensure plastics are designed to be circular, extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes can cover operational costs of ensuring the system’s circularity through requiring producers to finance the collection, recycling and responsible end-of-life disposal of plastic products.
De Kock said the report’s findings “align well” with the recommendations of international and local research, including that of WWF-SA. “Reduction in plastic production and consumption is the intervention with the most impact in the system, which will address the increasing flow of plastic into the environment.”
A circular plastics economy not only addresses leakage of plastics into the environment — air, land and aquatic — it improves people’s living conditions and human health, she said.
“Our local and regional study on the economic case for the transition to a circular plastics economy shows that the transition results in more jobs and improved livelihoods specifically downstream in the value chain,” said De Kock, adding that a study by the Council for Industrial and Scientific Research indicates an increase of jobs by 3% with the transition with minimal capital investment.
She said the evidence exists and the recommendations from research for policy and business make it clear what needs to be done. “However, there is much inertia, specifically from upstream stakeholders due to current economic benefits from the status quo and lack of innovation. Financial support is slowly forthcoming from the EPR regulation but implementation of these policies and initiatives takes time. Investors in South Africa are also behind the curve in investing in new circular plastic business models.”
Business members of the voluntary initiative, the SA Plastics Pact, have made progress, she said, while progressive EPR regulation for packaging was promulgated in 2021. “There is now recognition of the informal waste sector who collect the majority of plastic at end of life. However, more ambitious policy and business practices are required to move the needle and this would also be driven by the global treaty to end plastic pollution currently underway.”
De Kock said the key driver of plastic pollution is the business model of manufacturing plastics, where margins are so small that high volumes are needed to make profit. “The result is that we see plastic literally ‘flooding the market’ and the cheapest material available.
“In addition, the fossil fuel industry is looking for new markets and plastics has the most promise due to the increasing policy on climate impacts in the transport and energy sectors.”
But the Unep report’s promotion of burning plastic waste in cement kilns as a key strategy in the design and implementation of the global plastics treaty has raised concern.
Neil Tangri, of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), said: “Burning plastic waste in cement kilns is a ‘get out of jail free card’ for the plastic industry to keep ramping up plastic production by claiming that the plastic problem can be simply burned away.
“Not only does this pose a grave climate and public health threat, it also undermines the primary goal of the global plastic treaty — putting a cap on plastic production.”
Widespread burning of waste in cement kilns would create a “lock-in effect, perversely creating demand for cheap plastic waste for fuel that would defy global efforts towards restricting plastic production”, said the GAIA.
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