Composting has saved 750 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere
Thirteen million cubic metres of green material is a lot of mulch. Over the last 40 years, Reliance Compost has diverted this amount from landfills and used it to create certified organic compost. That’s 750 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide gas not released into the atmosphere.
Reliance’s mission is to entrench green practices for future generations. They do this by getting involved in the community.
While this may seem like a lofty ideal, they have proved over the years that they can make effective changes.
The plan is simple. Reliance director Eddie Redelinghys says: “It starts with fixing what previous generations have destroyed. To be able to do this in an affordable way we take another man’s waste and turn this into humus-rich compost. Then we take the compost and rebuild the soils to the state they were probably in before the settlers arrived. Once soils are rehabilitated, we plant it with superior plant varieties and then find the next-generation farmer to produce food for us and the export markets.”
Now Reliance Compost aims to turns their experience and expertise to the establishment of the Corona Agriculture Development and Organic Recycling Processing Facility.
Reliance joined forces with the previous owner of the Corona Farm and formulated strategies how to develop 10 farming units and a centralised services unit that could draw on Reliance’s track record to ensure success.
The facility will include a waste-to-energy plant and composting facility that will process organic waste from the city, private sources and companies. This organic waste may also be used to generate energy to power vehicles and equipment on site.
In the process, the plant will be rehabilitating 400 hectares of soil depleted by mining sand and gravel. This soil will be used to grow export quality organic fruit.
The 10 farming units will be transformed into working farms. Once these farms become functional and established, they will be transferred to 10 new farmers.
Entrepreneur programmes also support and guide new farm owners and young entrepreneurs who wish to work within the industry. Once completed, over 1 000 jobs will have been created. The Organic Recycling Facility therefore ticks a number of boxes, from land redistribution to rehabilitation of soil to empowerment.
The project has had a marked effect on the mind-set of local workers. “There are many farms like Corona that can be turned around by rehabilitating the soil and unlocking the true potential. We hope that others will follow the lead: we hope to change the way people think about land redistribution in South Africa,” says Redelinghys.