This was announced by the retail giant's technical manager Tom McLaughlin at Cape Town's waste minimisation summit on Wednesday.

He was presenting one of several case studies to demonstrate success stories relating to waste reduction, recycling and re-use, as well as initiatives that had not met expectations.

McLaughlin said about 40 percent of space in the average American household's refuse bin was taken up by food packaging waste, with some householders suggesting this could be as high as 60 percent or 70 percent.

"It's a shame that this is being dumped. It's wrong," he said.

His company had a five-year plan to reduce the packaging-to-product ratio by 20 percent.

McLaughlin also hit out at the government's introduction of a levy on plastic shopping bags, saying almost R100-million had been collected but not one bag had yet been recycled as a result, while the thicker plastic bags had resulted in more waste going into the landfills.

"It's a punishment for industry," he said.

Etienne Human of the South African Tyre Recycling Process Company said about 28 million scrap tyres, which have no recycling value to the tyre industry, were lying in the South African veld.

About 25 percent of all road accidents were tyre-related and many tyres which were replaced on passenger vehicles because they were in a "very bad state" still found their way into the used tyre trade.

"The SA Bureau of Standards and the Department of Trade and Industry are not interested in solving the problem, which is really a tragedy," he said.

Tyres could be used as fuel in cement kilns, replacing 10 percent of fossil fuel energy. "Crumbing" - when tyres are broken up into pellets - could use up to 60 percent of recycled tyres although this had to compete with other materials that looked and performed better, Human said.

But the economies of scale and current bad practice demanded that the recycled tyre industry be legislated, and a subsidy was required to make it financially viable for recyclers.

Deon McDillon of the non-profit Glass Recycling Company said glass, which was 100 percent re-usable, constituted about 4.7 percent of all waste. In South Africa, about 20 percent of all glass was recovered through recycling initiatives.

The company was looking to increase the volume recovered in the Western Cape.

Cheri Scholtz, acting general manager of Petco - the company established to recover and recycle Pet (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic containers - said they were growing at about 12 percent a year (14 percent the previous year).

The first Pet bottle recoveries of less than 2 000 tonnes a year had now grown to just under 15 000 tonnes a year, or the equivalent of about 440m bottles.

The recycled material was used for items such as fibre-fill for pillows, carpets for cars and ceiling insulation.

The firm, which operates eight drop-off centres in Cape Town, expected to collect about 20 000 tonnes this year, and its 2010 target was to recycle 38 percent of all Pet items, Scholtz said.

This article was originally published on page 4 of The Cape Argus on April 12, 2007Published on the Web by IOL on 2007-04-12 11:36:00

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