Collectors know the value in reclaiming used plastic PET bottles. They help to divert upwards of 90 000 tonnes of PET plastic bottles from landfill every year. Once collected, these used bottles are turned back into bottles (as well as many other products), contributing to SA’s GDP and eliminating the chance that they end up in the environment. They’re too important to be thrown in the rubbish.
Recycling ensures that a circular economy is established where the value of plastic bottles continues indefinitely. Collectors are an integral part to this sustainable way of doing business. Through PETCO’s efforts, we’ve been able to create over 60 000 income opportunities every year, most of them collectors. They are an invaluable part of the recycling chain.
PET packaging can be made from up to 100% recycled PET, recapturing both the material and the inherent energy of the original package.
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As with virgin PET, recycled PET (rPET) can be used to make many new products
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Plastic bottles are valuable. And this value creates income opportunities for informal collectors.
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To date, recycling PET bottles has saved over 1 million tonnes of carbon, avoided using almost 5 million m3 of landfill space and reduced resource consumption.
+Modern living has driven the desire for convenience foods in ready-to-prepare and single-serve formats. This has given rise to all sorts of products that could not exist without packaging - like carbonated soft drinks, long life milk, ready meals and household chemicals, even electronic products like computers and TVs that need to work as soon as they're out the box.
But once it's performed this function, packaging takes on an entirely different face: it becomes cumbersome waste. By not considering the impact of packaging on the waste stream, the ugly and unwanted perception people have of packaging will continue.
