Thanks to the combined efforts of the Paper Recycling Association of South Africa (RecyclePaperZA) and local entrepreneur Cecil Barends, the recovery of recyclables is gaining momentum in Springbok, a town situated in the heart of the Northern Cape’s Namaqualand spring-flower country.

Following RecyclePaperZA’s entrepreneurship course during which Cecil served as facilitator, 20 local residents have committed to using recycling as the medium through which they can gain a regular income in a region stressed by acute unemployment.

The course offers four days of entrepreneurship training and covers paper sorting and recycling, the sorting and recycling of other waste streams, business skills development and financial management.

“We were vastly impressed by the ‘can-do’ attitude of participants and the way they bonded to translate ideas into income-generating action,” says RecyclePaperZA operations director Ursula Henneberry.

“At the conclusion of the course, participants immediately formed a huddle to plot the way forward, and one woman even planned to set forth to collect refuse from her local spaza store the very next day,” says Ursula.

Cecil explains that the group is in the process of forming a venture to be known as the Namakwa Recycling Cooperative.

“While paper recycling is obviously our prime focus, we will also collect other recyclable materials like PET, glass and metals to aid the viability of the cooperative as a sustainable operation,” says Cecil who plans to meet with major industry players to discuss distribution and pricing structures.

The promotional aspects of this venture have certainly not been overlooked and, thanks to Cecil, their project received welcome coverage on local radio and print media. He has also canvassed Springbok businesses who have responded favourably by providing the cooperative with their unwanted cartons and paper waste.

In addition, Cecil is working on an education and awareness campaign at schools, firstly to teach learners about the benefits of recycling and, secondly, to canvas them as an important source of home and classroom waste.

While Springbok will at this stage remain the hub for the recycling venture, Cecil intends extending the initiative to the length and breadth of Namaqualand.

The unemployment rate in the Northern Cape is 26.5%, and with Springbok situated a respective 776km, 932km and 1,160km from Kimberly, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg, recycling presents a valuable opportunity for job creation and income generation.

The post Namakwa Recycling Cooperative – The Paper Story (PAMSA) first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Organisations like the Paper Recycling Association of South Africa (RecyclePaperZA) are working towards a ‘recycling-minded’ society by teaching ordinary people how they can make an extraordinary difference – with everyday items.

“Separating paper and cardboard products from home, school and office waste and keeping it aside for conversion into other products has many benefits, both for the environment and the people who make a living by collecting recyclables and selling them on to buy-back centres and paper manufacturers,” says RecyclePaperZA operations director Ursula Henneberry.

RENEWABLE AND RECYCLABLE

The paper products we come into daily contact with – ranging from office paper and newspapers, medicine boxes and magazines, juice and milk cartons to cardboard cores from toilet rolls – can all be recycled.

They are also completely renewable because, at some point, their fibre would have come from sustainably and responsibly farmed trees that are planted, grown, harvested and replanted in cycles.

Recycling also keeps the carbon originally stored in the wood fibre of trees locked in paper products and out of the atmosphere for longer.

Unfortunately large quantities of paper still end up in landfills, which are rapidly running out of space, and add to greenhouse gas emissions when paper decomposes with other waste.

“During 2014, 64% of recoverable paper was recycled, 2% more than in 2013 and 5% more than in 2012,” says Henneberry. “For every tonne of paper recycled, up to three cubic metres of landfill space is saved – land that could be better used for housing, agriculture and infrastructure. During 2014, South Africans recycled 1.1 million tonnes, enough to fill 1,276 Olympic-sized swimming pools.”

But we need to do more. It is estimated that only 5% of households recycle paper.

RecyclePaperZA advises that householders keep recyclables aside for an informal collector who walks your neighbourhood every week. “This increases the quality of the recyclables, allowing the collector to earn a little more.”

TRASH IS TREASURE

“In a country with high unemployment rates and accompanying poverty, paper recycling is becoming a source of revenue for a growing number of people. An estimated 35,000 people put food on their tables by walking the streets to collect ‘waste’ in return for cash or work for larger companies to recover, sort and weigh recyclables for conversion into usable and commercially viable products.

The pulp and paper manufacturing industry is a key sector in the South African economy. Importantly, it employs a workforce of more than 150,000 people across the value chain – from forestry, to pulp and paper manufacturing to informal collectors. These people in turn collectively feed, clothe and school around 900,000 dependants.

“Companies that produce paper products run major mills specifically designed to turn today’s phonebooks, magazines, notepads, company minutes, milk cartons and cereal boxes into tomorrow’s egg containers, corrugated boxes and board, newspapers and tissue products,” states Henneberry.

“Some 65% of recovered paper is used as fibre, without which these mills would stand idle, unable to manufacture the pulp used to produce materials for products manufactured in South Africa and exported around the world.”

You can get involved by separating all kinds of refuse, starting with paper and moving on to plastics, glass and cans.

Paper products you can recycle:

• all office paper
• coloured paper
• newspaper, magazines (even glossy ones)
• catalogues, phonebooks
• direct marketing leaflets
• cardboard packaging of all kinds, shapes and sizes – boxes used for moving; electronics, shoes, gifts and cereal
• paper towel and toilet paper cores
• food packaging (unwaxed only please)
• shredded paper (in plastic bag to minimize blow-away)
• milk, juice and liquid cartons (should be empty)
• books: all soft cover, hard or plastic covers should be ripped off
• pizza boxes (food and wax paper removed)
• brown paper bags

Remember, paper should be separated from wet waste so it does not get contaminated.

Paper products you shouldn’t recycle

• Tissue paper and paper towel
• Wax paper
• Used cement and dog food bags
• Disposable nappies
• Plastic lined papers
• Foil lined papers

RECYCLING PROGRAMMES

• Visit mywaste.co.za for programmes in your area.
  • Enrol in a free kerbside collection programme.
  • Find a drop-off centre near your home or office, usually at local shopping centres.
• Check with local community centres, places of worship or schools if they have a paper recycling programme from which they benefit financially.
• Contract the services of a small recycling business.

Clean-up SA and Recycle Week takes place between September 14 and 18, and National Recycling Day is celebrated on Friday, September 18. International Coastal Clean-up Day takes place on Saturday, 19 September.

The post Discover the treasure in your trash first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Climate change and sustainability are two of the biggest issues facing society today. It is therefore increasingly important for companies to reduce their environmental impact of products and services through their whole life cycle. Companies failing to address environmental performance in product design and development will find it increasingly difficult to compete in the global market.

Download:  Design For Recycling Guide Book

The post Download ‘Design for Recycling’ – a reference guide for the packaging industry first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 27, 2013 (RISI) – McDonald’s has agreed to replace its polystyrene foam hot beverage cups with paper-based cups at all its 14,000 restaurants in the US, according to social corporate responsibility advocate As You Sow.

McDonald’s rolled out a pilot program in March 2012 to replace foam cups with paper stock at 2,000 of its US stores. The company tested double-walled fiber hot cups at 15% of their stores, primarily on the West Coast, for consumer acceptance, operation impact, and overall importance.

“The company has confirmed that the pilots were successful and that it will phase out foam cups at all locations in the coming months. We are pleased that the company decided to make the switch to paper cups permanent and expand it to all of its restaurants,” As You Sow said.

Starbucks uses 10% recycled paper fiber in its paper hot beverage cups and has committed to recycle all post-consumer paper and plastic cups discarded in company-owned stores by 2015, As You Sow noted.

Source: http://www.risiinfo.com

The post McDonald’s to replace polystyrene foam cups with paper cups at 14,000 US restaurants first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Suitable for children from 3 years old – and for parents of any age – Makedo will take the ho-hum out of your day, replacing it with stimulating bonding time, and the irreplaceable benefits of fun, experiential and explorative time with your youngsters, while also developing their hand-eye coordination and lateral thinking.

The Makedo connector system encourages the use of recyclable materials such as cardboard, plastic and fabric.  Now all those throw-away containers can become building blocks for new fantasy creatures, make-believe playtime or role-play.

Makedo tools are re-usable, affordable and include plastic lock-hinges, re-clip fasteners and a safe-saw, or you can buy kits to create elephants, cars, flowers and many more.

To get “makedoing”, please visit www.coralmoon.co.za or contact Lee on 083 304 4440.

Compiled by on behalf of Makedo®:

Jacqui von Loggenburg

Shake The Tree Marketing 082 387 1150

The post Fun with paper and board first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Nokwanda Sotyantya sits among heaps of garbage and patiently sorts through it, separating cardboard, plastic, glass, paper and metal, piece by piece. The recycled piles of trash are then weighed and sold to packaging manufacturers in South Africa that reuse the materials to create new products.

Sotyantya belongs to the country’s first group of small business entrepreneurs who have benefited from the government’s move towards a green economy. It is a strategy aimed at creating environmental sustainability, social equity, and economic growth; the government wants to create 300,000 jobs within a decade in this sector.

For 48-year-old Sotyantya, who is a member of a local recycling cooperative and lives in Imizamo Yethu, a slum outside of Cape Town, the move towards a green economy has turned her life around.

Previously unemployed and struggling to survive, she says she now earns an average of 250 dollars a month from her work – enough to care for herself and her four children.

“The more people become aware of the benefits of recycling, the more rubbish gets dropped off at the Hout Bay waste centre. For me, that translates into more money,” Sotyantya explains.

One man’s waste is another’s wealth.

The Hout Bay Recycling Co-op to which she belongs is based at the municipal waste drop-off site in Hout Bay. Here Sotyantya and other members of the cooperative sort and sell the recycled material.

Her cooperative of six formerly jobless, poverty-stricken men and women currently recycles 25 tonnes of waste each month. And this number is slowly increasing.

The cooperative received a boost when Thrive, a social enterprise incubator that helps green start-ups to become viable, competitive businesses, decided to help the cooperative improve its business strategy and management expertise.

“We focus on creating jobs that help to minimise waste, increase renewable sources, protect and restore local biodiversity, reduce energy and water demands and create a local food network,” explains Thrive managing director Iming Lin.

It is much more than developing traditional business models, she adds; it is about incorporating social, environmental and economic benefits.

Although it has only been operating since July 2011, Thrive’s work has not gone unnoticed. The SEED Initiative of the (www.unep.org/) United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) acknowledged the organisation’s work by selecting it for one of its 2011 sustainable development awards that are annually presented to 35 African grassroots entrepreneurs in the green economy.

“On this continent, companies and countries, from small communities to heads of state, are suddenly realising the importance of the green economy,” says UNEP spokesperson Nick Nuttall.

Growth does not happen in a vacuum.

Economic development and environmental and social sustainability cannot operate in isolation, he says.

“Going green doesn’t mean it’s nice and fluffy. There are some hard economic figures behind it, too.” Creating a green economy is no longer an option, but a requirement, Nuttall says.

“We are living in a world of seven billion people increasing to over nine billion by 2050. If we don’t change the way we consume goods and services and think about the environmental limits, then we’re in trouble.

“But it’s a world of opportunity too,” Nuttal says, adding, “there are more and more examples of small businesses solving big problems and creating livelihoods.”

It is an opportunity that the South African government wants to seize over the next few years. In November, it signed a Green Economic Accord that stipulates active national investment in the green economy.

“The green economy can create large numbers of jobs, provide a spur for industrialisation and help create a sustainable future for this and the next generations,” said Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel after the accord was announced.

The agreement is part of a plan to shift towards a lower carbon-intensity economy, while creating jobs and promoting industrial development.

But government alone cannot manage and fund South Africa’s transition to a green economy, says Patel. The business sector, trade unions and civil society organisations must also play a role.

That is why organisations like Thrive have started talking to and collaborating with different government departments, such as environmental affairs, trade and industry, solid waste or public works, to jointly develop ways of giving the local green economy a jolt.

“Social enterprises are a growing model. We want to develop donor-independent, viable, scalable business models that link the economy and the environment and that can be rolled out in multiple communities or even nationally,” says Lin.

“Government has been very supportive of what we’re doing.”

Apart from supporting the recycling cooperative, Thrive is trying to get a number of other innovative green economy businesses off the ground.

One of them is TrashBack, a bicycle recycling collection scheme that picks up re-usable material from restaurants, businesses and residential housing complexes, which are currently not serviced by the municipality. For every eight clients – or 4800kg of garbage – TrashBack can create one full-time job, says Lin.

“We want to show people how it all links into each other: waste, water, food, jobs and better livelihoods for all,” says Lin.

“We can’t afford not to have a green economy.”

Source: www.moneyweb.co.za

Article written by: Sapa-IPS

The post The business of South Africa’s garbage first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).

Abstract

Type “paper versus plastic” into Google and you’ll find 14,000,000 hits, many of which seem to tell you that plastic is “superior” to paper in terms of environmental performance. Immediately one asks: “How can it be? The plastics industry is an industry that relies on non-renewable resources!”

In most of the reported studies, little is detailed regarding the boundaries chosen or exactly what data pertaining to paper have been included for comparison. “Paper” is compared in generic terms without reference to the grade, function or even the process producing that paper. Environmental impact, and notably carbon impact, depends on the specific process producing the paper. Given these considerations, the question must be asked whether the comparisons being drawn with plastic are meaningful? Yet, despite these uncertainties, the comparisons persist and continue to influence opinion.

A significant amount of information appears to exist with a pro-plastic slant with little on the positives of paper. In a time of declining markets, it is perhaps a critical time for the paper industry, particularly in South Africa, to start telling “The Paper Story”.  This paper examines the theoretical basis for the carbon side of “The Paper Story” and proposes the way in which the story might be told.

The post Selling the Paper Story – A Strategic Initiative for the Paper Industry first appeared on The Paper Story (PAMSA).