Encouraging figures for recycling of SA’s plastic bottles
New statistics show that 62% of all PET plastic beverage bottles produced in the country in 2019 were collected for recycling.
The annual figures were released by the PET Recycling Company (PETCO), the sector’s producer responsibility organisation. PET stands for polyethene terephthalate.
The 62% figure adds up to a whopping 95,879 tonnes of post-consumer PET bottles – and had these not been collected, they would have taken up 594,448 cubic metres of landfill space and produced 144,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.
South Africa’s plastic recycling value chain also creates thousands of jobs for informal reclaimers who were finally able to return to work under level 3 of the national lockdown.
Besides the environmental benefits, PET recycling generated 65,900 income-earning opportunities among informal reclaimers and SMMEs in South Africa in 2019, with R1.1bn injected into the downstream economy through the manufacturing, distribution and sale of products made from recycled PET (rPET).
PETCO CEO Cheri Scholtz says while the overall 2% year-on-year decrease in volume was disappointing, it was as good as could be expected considering the significant loss of capacity following the shutting down of one of South Africa’s six PET recyclers.
“The closure of Mpact Polymers had a significant impact on our capacity to recycle, with the remaining recyclers unable to pick up the slack as they were already operating at maximum capacity in the fourth quarter,” Scholtz says.
On a positive note, she says the weight of rPET sold – more than 23,904 tonnes – was similar to 2018, reflecting both the improving output at the remaining recyclers and the increasing demand for rPET.
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