The Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) has reported several big milestones over the past three years.

Here are REDISA’s key achievements from 2013 to the end of April 2016:

The recycling company has collected 209 027 tonnes of waste tyres and is currently collecting 70% of available tyres. Notably REDISA has offset 59 040 tons of CO₂ emissions to date.

REDISA now operates 21 depots nationally, has created 3 160 jobs and trained 1 643 people (536 training modules completed) in the last three years.

226 SMME operations are registered as per the REDISA Plan and rollout. REDISA has serviced 2 067 dealers, and as the Plan continues in its five year rollout, more dealers and collection points will be collected from nationwide.

The company is actively involved in research and development collaboration with Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) and Stellenbosch University, involving 19 research projects, and has granted 31 research students bursaries.

REDISA is currently using NMMU expertise to support the creation of the Product Testing Institute (PTI) which will carry out tyre testing according to SA homologation standards and international standards, and will be developing a new set of standards which will define an environmental rating for tyres.