Petco is always interested in assessing how we can support informal waste collectors and wastepreneurs, whether it be infrastructure and equipment or training and development. Our landfills would be in an even worse predicament without their efforts. Over the years, they’ve also made a marked impact on South Africa’s recycling performance.

Recently, Petco assisted three small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) that together collect on average more than 61 tonnes of mixed recyclables per month, of which over 20 tonnes is PET.

The SMMEs are Mayflower Waste Pickers in Mpumalanga, Siyazama Community Development Foundation in Eastern Cape’s Mdantsane township, and Abayikwe Trading Store in Kwangwanase, KwaZulu-Natal.

To each of these three buyback centres, Petco sponsored an industrial platform scale, which is an essential instrument for accurately weighing the recyclables brought in by waste collectors.

Mayflower Waste Pickers collects post-consumer plastics (including PET, PE-HP, LD-PE and PP), as well as other recyclables – mostly from landfill and the surrounding Mayflower communities. They bring in around six tonnes per month of mixed recyclables, of which two tonnes is PET. The industrial platform scale has already made an immense impact on their operation as they now can buy and weigh more recyclables from collectors.

Siyazama Community Development Foundation is a non-profit organisation which was registered in 2018 and has been in operation for six months. The Foundation collects plastics and other recyclables from surrounding communities, retail outlets, schools and clinics in the Mdantsane area outside East London. On average they collect 12.4 tonnes per month of mixed recyclables. The NPO is also driving initiatives such as swop shops and getting children to collect recyclables from students. In turn, they supply these kids with stationery and other educational essentials. They desperately needed an industrial scale, and Petco hopes our help makes an impact on further empowering their waste initiatives.

Abayikwe Trading Store is a buyback centre in KZN’s small town of Kwangwanase that has been in operation for 10 years. It is owned by one entrepreneur who has a special interest in recycling and keeping his community waste free. The SMME collects about 43 tonnes of mixed recyclables monthly, of which six tonnes is PET. PETCO anticipates that the scale will help Abayikwe Trading take a big step forward in its endeavours to become a fully-fledged buyback centre.

Through the ongoing mapping of projects, we supported in the past, Petco continuously expands its support network throughout South Africa. Petco also specifically focuses on areas most in need of assistance with waste collection or where we have a relatively smaller support footprint than other provinces.

In 2021 alone, we engaged with 40 municipalities and partnered with various corporates to provide equipment and infrastructure support to more than 250 projects in the informal collection sector.

A big part of our focus is on waste pickers, SMMEs and co-operatives across all nine provinces. It’s our expectation that with these support initiatives we can help the informal sector optimise their waste collection efforts, drive their operations towards self-sustainability, and also increase the quantity and quality of PET collected.

In many of our cities, PET collection activities provide income generating opportunities and help improve livelihoods in lesser privileged communities. Collecting waste to earn a living is not glamorous, but for many it has become a way of life to make ends meet. Petco deeply appreciates all these individual and collective efforts.

Some of the main challenges faced by informal collectors include lack of transportation, lack of finances, lack of business expertise and insight, lack of equipment and tools, and inadequate secure spaces to separate and store waste materials.

With limited widespread municipal separation-at-source collection systems in place, these networks of informal waste collectors and wastepreneurs play a mostly underappreciated but valuable role in the creation of a circular economy in South Africa.