South Africa’s efforts to build a circular economy for post-consumer packaging are in the spotlight with the country’s most experienced producer responsibility organisation, Petco, and recycling partner Extrupet’s new PET processing facility that represents a first-of-its-kind technology for Africa. When it comes on stream in 2025, the facility housing the new R300-million project, will bring PET bottle-to-bottle recycling capability to the Western Cape for the first time – and will add an extra 15 000 tonnes per annum of food-grade recycled PET (rPET) output capacity. In this interview with BizNews, Extrupet joint managing director Chandru Wadhwani and Petco Marketing Manager Kara Levy share the details.
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Extended transcript of the interview
Chris Steyn (00:04.485)
A new bottle-to-bottle recycling facility brings First-for-Africa technology to the Western Cape. We speak to Chandru Wadhwani, joint MD of Extrupet and Kara Levy, Petco’s Marketing Manager. Welcome to you both.
Kara Levy (00:22.53)
Thank you.
Chris Steyn (00:23.983)
Chandru may we please start with you? What is so special about this First-for-Africa technology?
Chandru Wadhwani (00:30.745)
So this technology is made by an Austrian company called Erema. It’s their new range of bottle- to-bottle recycling systems. This one is VACUNITE. It was first launched in Europe probably about two, maximum three years ago. We went to have a look at it close to two years ago and placed an order of March of last year and I’m proud to say it’s the first VACUNITE system coming onto the African continent.
Chris Steyn (01:04.322)
Now, when will your facility come on stream and what will its output capacity be?
Chandru Wadhwani (01:10.831)
So the good news is the machines finally arrived last week. We are now frantically positioning, erecting, and commissioning. And all going well, we’ll be up and running in the month of November. So not long to go. And that will add an additional 15,000 metric tons per annum of food grade rPET output onto the market.
Chris Steyn (01:37.433)
Chandru, why is it so important for brand owners to design their bottles with a circular economy in mind?
Chandru Wadhwani (01:47.376)
So many reasons. The most important is to be mindful that we live on a planet with limited resources. And for us to design products in a linear fashion where they’re designed to end up as waste squanders resources that are finite. By making your product circular, you’ve designed in it an end of life that acts as raw material to become that same product in its next life and hence circularity.
Without brand owners being part of that process, the reality is we will have products that are designed to fail, sadly, and will end up being linear, heading straight into the environment.
Chris Steyn (02:31.085)
In the same vein, what is the importance of design to ensure that packaging can be collected and recycled in South Africa?
Chandru Wadhwani (02:39.588)
So again, I think every territory has to be mindful of the logistics with which it operates. Africa works on a very informal collection system and as much as we aspire to have separation at source and formal systems, the reality is we have to be mindful that products are picked for recycling as opposed to auto-sorted at domestic level. If brand owners aren’t mindful about the weight of their product, for example and make their packaging too light or too small, the reality is it won’t be collected, let alone be recycled. You then have challenges around adding pigments. So in terms of PET, the only bottles that are truly circular in the South African context are those that are clear or light blue. Anything that has a pigment either has to be downcycled or if it’s a very heavy pigment like an opaque bottle as we see in the dairy industry, those are sadly destined for landfill. Being mindful of the closure and the label they use as well will influence the outcome of the collectability as well as then ultimately the recyclability of that bottle.
Chris Steyn (03:56.377)
How well is South Africa currently doing in terms of recycling? And what will this facility mean?
Chandru Wadhwani (04:05.586)
So South Africa has for the better part of the last 20 years been an exemplary performer in terms of PET, post-consumer recovery and recycling. We’re currently at the 64% threshold recovered that is ahead of many European countries. At the end of the day, it’s certainly the leader on the African continent. Having said that, along with Petco and their members, we’re mindful that there’s still 36% out there, and in a growing economy with growing populations the quantum you don’t collect also becomes sizable and this plant now adds new capacity to allow us to go and collect more bottles.
Chris Steyn (04:50.885)
Kara, over to you. How have Petco as a responsibility organisation and Extrupet as its recycling partner been working together over the past 20 years?
Kara Levy (05:02.498)
So we’ve had a very good working relationship over the last 20 years. I unfortunately wasn’t around to see the beginning of it, but Extrupet has been a great partner in terms of enabling Petco as a producer responsibility to actually ensure that the bottles that are collected on behalf of our members have somewhere to go and to be processed and to become new and useful materials, whether that is, as Chandru said, becoming a brand new PET plastic bottle or inputs into food grade packaging, or as the sister company of Extrupet does, they make polyester staple fibre which can be used for inputs into things like duvets and your jackets and into cushions and car mats and things like that. So they’ve been an extremely important partner as one of our recycling partners enabling our bottles that we collect to become something new and useful.
Chris Steyn (06:02.819)
What campaigns are currently being run to change the way South Africans think about recycling?
Kara Levy (06:09.376)
So we’ve got two campaigns running. The first one is called The Reasons to Recycle. And what we’ve done is that we’ve built interactive screens that will go into shopping malls in Cape Town and Johannesburg, which is the first kind of phase and pilot of the project. And what it is, is it’s interactive screens that basically have different tiles that people can go and interact with. There are promoters there as well that represent us. And it basically highlights the different reasons why you should or why you could start recycling, hopefully just to increase the amount of the different reasons.
I think, you know, many South Africans don’t understand the income opportunities or the benefits to the environment, the benefits to the economy that recycling actually has. And so we’re just trying to increase awareness around that and hopefully just help a few more people to understand the different reasons why they could or should start partaking.
The second campaign that we’re running at the moment is a docu-series which can be found on our YouTube channel which is Petco Official and there it is six episodes each with a different topic and we interview members of the Petco team, people within the recycling and collection recycling value chain as well as some experts, and Chandru is featured there as one of the experts. So each of the top each of the episodes tackles a different topic all the way from is labeling on packaging important or is recycling important or what does the value chain look like just to increase awareness and education around what is actually going on in South Africa because I think a lot of people don’t actually know, a lot of people think why should I do it where does it go, does something happen to it – and there’s really a whole industry and that happens around recycling in South Africa which we’re trying to just shed a bit of a light on.
Chris Steyn (08:12.463)
So how can ordinary South Africans start collecting and packaging for recycling at home?
Kara Levy (08:19.732)
So the process really starts when you’re shopping. And I would encourage people to, when they are at the shelf, have a look, see what their packaging is made of.
There is hopefully going to be a further rollout of what we call an unpacked recycling label, which you might have seen on some products like Woolworths, where it actually says bottle recyclable, label recyclable, cap recyclable. And we encourage consumers to actually purchase products that are recyclable and preferably that actually include recycled content, which we encourage people to look for.
Then once we do that, we go home, drink, we eat, we consume, you know packaging really increases the life and protects the products that we are actually wanting to consume. I always say, you know, there’s a very fine line between food waste and packaging that’s fit for purpose and actually land up protecting the food that we have. We’ve got a huge food waste problem in South Africa. So once we’ve finished enjoying the food products and the drinks that we use, we encourage people to just separate in their homes or at their workplaces, which means putting your recyclable packaging into one bag or bin and your non-recyclable and food waste in another.
I mean the optimal thing is to also have a separate bag for compost, which hopefully we’ll start to move to and see more of that happening. But it’s really just about making sure that your recyclable packaging is actually separate from the items that are going to landfill. And once you’ve done that, you’ve got a recycling station at home. So whether that means two bins, whether it means one bin and one bag, whether it means one black bag, which is for the landfall bound items and one clear bag for your recyclable items.
Kara Levy (10:09.46)
And then you just need to dispose of it responsibly. So there are two ways that this can be done. You can either get your recyclable packaging collected. So some of us, I’m based in Cape Town, and I know that some people in Cape Town are lucky enough to have what’s called curbside collection, which is run by the municipality. And that means that you can just literally leave your clear bag out on your recycling day and the city will collect it for you free of charge across the city …or you can hire a SMME so it’s as simple as literally typing into Google recycling collection service Wyberg which is where I’m based at the moment. And there should be collection services that pop up. Or you can leave it out for waste pickers. So there’s a lot of informal waste pickers that are working in South Africa to do a lot of the work that people don’t do in order to actually ensure that those recyclable packaging items are separated from waste. And we encourage people to engage with them and speak to them and ask them what they’re interested in collecting and then to leave out those items in a clear bag. Alternatively, you can take your recyclable packaging to a drop off site, or if you’re actually wanting to make a little bit of money back from those items, you can take them to what’s called a buy-back centre. So there are lots of different ways and it’s actually very easy. I think a lot of people think, where must I start? But it’s actually quite simple. And I think once you start doing it and you start seeing, I mean, for example, my black bag on Bin Day, I’ve got a compost little packet that I have, I’ve got my recycling, and I’ve got my black bin bag for my waste and that black bin is basically empty. It’s got very little things in it. Yeah, I think it’s just about starting doing simple Googling, following us on social media and we give a lot of tips and tricks…
Kara Levy (12:17.728)
Yeah, finding out from people who do what they do in their area. And there obviously aren’t drop-off sites everywhere around South Africa, but just having the conversations and doing a bit of research.
Chris Steyn (12:30.979)
Great. Chandru, any last thoughts from you or a message to South Africans? Wisdom, recycling wisdom from you.
Chandru Wadhwani (14:00.906)
So absolutely one last closing point is as much as we task brand owners to design their products appropriately for recycling partnerships like Petco and Extrupet ensure on recovery and recycling, put a lot of work with converters to technically embed recycled material into packaging without affecting its functionality, ultimately, it’s up to the consumer. If consumers don’t support the drive to use more products that have recycled material, then sadly all these efforts are for naught. So really my message would be to everyone is to engage in the subject of recycling, become educated on the back of programmes like this, and ultimately your behavior will influence the shape of purchasing products that have recycle content. Thank you.
Chris Steyn (15:02.394)
Thank you. That was Chandru Wadhwani of Extrupet and Kara Levy of Petco speaking to BizNews about a new bottle-to-bottle recycling facility that brings First-for-Africa recycling technology to the Western Cape. Thank you both.
Chandru Wadhwani (15:18.432)
Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thanks, Kara.
Kara Levy (15:18.882)
Thank you.
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