Late last year, some of our members joined Petco for a behind-the-scenes look at the journey their PET packaging goes on once it leaves a consumer’s hands.

In November, we conducted site visits to two key role players in the value chain – a buy-back centre and one of our recycling partners – for a first-hand experience of their daily operations and to highlight some of the challenges they face.

It also helped to demonstrate the facilitating role that Petco plays when it comes to building an effective and sustainable collection and recycling  value chain. Our support strives to strike an effective balance between developing the informal and formal collection space, boosting recycling capacity, and stimulating feasible end-use markets for packaging collected.

These site visits provided an ideal opportunity for members to see the results of this support, which their EPR fees contribute to, in action.

Joining us on the day out in Johannesburg were representatives from Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa, Diageo South Africa, The Beverage Company (BevCo), Pick n Pay, Polyoak Packaging, Suntory Beverage & Food South Africa, Tiger Brands, and Unilever South Africa.

Our first stop was at Vortex Recycling in Sandton, which is one of Johannesburg’s bigger  buy-back centres for plastic, paper, and metals. Members experienced first-hand the practical side of collection, the critical role that waste pickers play in bringing these recyclables to the buy-back centre, as well as some of the more common operational challenges involved.

Next, we visited Extrupet, which is one of the largest and most advanced recyclers of PET containers on the continent, and presently South Africa’s only bottle-to-bottle recycler. Members were given the opportunity to observe the various stages in the conversion of used PET bottles into high-quality, reliable end-products for use in packaging and other applications.

It was also an object lesson in the need to improve packaging design for recycling, as members could see the practical problems and additional labour costs required to physically remove PET shrink sleeves and metal closures that impede the recycling process.

Because members don’t always get the opportunity to gain on-the-ground insight into the complex journey of packaging once disposed of by consumers, it’s our hope that these site visits will add value to their decision-making and bring greater clarity to the role they play in advancing South Africa’s PET value chain.

We are busy planning additional site visits for the year ahead and will be sharing these dates with our members in due course.