Recycling project pumps up over-border trucking volumes

One man’s garbage can be, if not another man’s treasure at least the basis for a promising new industry. Swift road transport over border has allowed a Swazi firm to pioneer the recycling of refuse in the country by moving its entire product to SA for processing. “Essentially we are a collection agency until such time as we can build a processing plant here in Swaziland. All the paper we collect goes to Golden Era; glass goes to Nampak; and plastics go to Transpaco, all in the Johannesburg area,” Sifiso Ginindza, director of Envirowise Waste Management, told FTW. “Every day a truck is going to Johannesburg, 34 tons at a time. These are doubletrailer superlink trucks that we lease,” Ginindza said. Located at the Matsapha Industrial Estate, the firm will soon open the country’s first “buyback” centre where the public and private companies can receive cash for recyclable materials. The firm is partnering with the Manzini municipal government to relieve the city’s landfill by allowing the removal of recyclable materials. Special paperwork is required to transport the material over border, using either the Oshoek or Mahamba border posts. Sars needs to ensure that the erstwhile garbage isn’t being dumped in SA somewhere. “They inspect to see that it isn’t toxic material. They want to know who receives it. We have the order forms from the Jo’burg companies where the bundles are going. Without the permits nothing goes through,” Ginindza said. “By the time we bail up everything at our Matsapha site everything is already dried up, so there is no odour. Only when it’s newly collected and it’s soiled does it have an odour,” he said. A fleet of in-country vehicles is kept in motion daily, collecting recyclable materials from a growing number of collection points. “We use smaller trucks that make their rounds from Mbabane to Manzini and Matsapha with a stop in Ezulwini. We also go to Nhlangano (in the southern Shiselweni region) and Siphofaneni (in the eastern Lubombo region),” said Samantha Banda, research and marketing officer for Envirowise. A R2-million sorting machine is in the pipeline, but the construction of a factory to process waste products locally will require much more input to justify the investment. Manzini alone produces 900 tons of potentially recyclable materials weekly, and if half of that could be processed it would turn the recycling industry from a novelty in Swaziland into a serious business. Meanwhile, the SA partner firms are happy to take all the bundled Swazi throwaways they receive. CAPTION Envirowise’s Samantha Banda, Sifiso Ginindza and Majaha Khumalo outside their Swaziland premises … a truck moves to Johannesburg daily, 34 tons at a time.