National Recycling and Clean-up Week has seen South African companies in the industry pull together and come out in their droves with various projects. Cape-based Tuffy Brands, which manufacturers of 100% recycled refuse bags, signed a partnership agreement with the City of Cape Town this week to supply 60 000 free refuse bags for school clean-up events to 30 schools participating in the WasteWise Eco-Schools project across the Cape metropole area.

The WasteWise programme is one of the city’s integrated waste minimisation and awareness programmes, aimed at encouraging action among the general public and businesses of Cape Town to minimise waste, reduce littering, stop illegal dumping and increase recycling. Rory Murray, the marketing director at Tuffy, says that this is part of their corporate social investment initiative.

“We have been providing bags for this initiative since 2010, so it is great for us to see this partnership formalised to ensure that this campaign has maximum impact. It is significant that we officially launch this during the month of September as a pre-amble to Clean-up South Africa Week beginning on September 10 and South Africa’s Recycling Day on the 14th.

“It is important for us to be involved in activities like this that make a difference by enabling communities to take ownership of initiatives in their neighbourhoods.

In the meanwhile, Plastics SA has announced that the world’s largest annual volunteer effort for ocean health, the International Coastal Clean-Up (ICC), will again take place this year on Saturday, 15 Septembe when volunteers from all walks of life hit the country’s beaches between 09h00 and 12h00 in an effort to keep our country’s beaches beautiful and litter-free.

During last year’s event alone, nearly 600 000 volunteers were mobilised to clean coastal beaches and inland waterways all over the world. South-Africa was ranked 6th on the list of top 10 participating countries.

Along with our partners at Ocean Conservancy and KZN Conservation Services, we try to educate people that plastics don’t litter, people do”, said John Kieser, the sustainability manager of Plastics SA and national co-ordinator for the ICC. “Plastics SA has also signed the Plastics Industry’s Global Declaration for Solutions on Marine Litter, to express our commitment to address plastics marine debris. We are working hard to make South Africans aware of the role they play in littering and that used plastics should be recycled and not strewn on our beaches.”

During last year’s event, 21 000 South African volunteers covered a distance of 488 km along our country’s shoreline, where they collected a staggering 44 738 kg of debris. Underwater clean-ups also took place with the help of 154 divers who removed 1 687 kg of debris from the ocean’s floor. Results from last year’s clean-ups show that packaging litter continues to be a problem on South Africa’s beaches.

And cans were not left behind. Collect-a-Can in partnership with the City of Johannesburg embraced National Recycling Week and successfully kicked off the clean-up week at the Inkanyezi Sports and Recreation Centre and Park in North Moroka in Soweto.

Ward Councillor Shimane Motlhamme of Ward 38 in Region D, Moroka indicated, “We are proud to be setting the example in Moroka today; we are working towards Johannesburg being a world-class African city; we will not be able to achieve this vision if we don’t look after all the pockets of places in our province. The community plays a very important role when it comes to achieving this goal, and it is very important that the community take ownership of their environment. We are glad to be working as a department with Collect-a-Can; we are taking responsibility together, and we hope that through this the community commits to a cleaner environment; not only today but going forward as well.”