New recycling facility to create green jobs

Many members of three Tembisan recycling cooperatives, Matshupela, Minenhle and Tiyisatsane, attended the official opening and handing over of Sethokga Waste Minimisation Facility. This included the handover of recycling equipment and a new white Kia bakkie.
The handover was led by the City of Ekurhuleni’s Member of Mayoral Committee, Clr Ndosi Shongwe together with a delegation from European Union led by the Head of Economics and Infrastructure Sector, Mr Bart van Uythem.
The official opening of the ceremony took place at Motsu Park Hall on Saturday.
The celebration proceeded to Sethokga where MMC Shongwe and Mr van Uythem unveiled the plaque of Sethokga Waste Minimisation Facility of Matshupela cooperative.
Local councillors and other community members also took part in the handover.
Speaking at the official opening, MMC Shongwe said, “Today we are here to celebrate the establishment of recycling cooperatives. We appreciate the partnership of the European Union with the City of Ekurhuleni to ensure that we have cooperatives. We are proud to have created jobs through the recycling project. The total budget of the three projects was R17-million and we thank the EU for providing 80 percent of the budget.
“Ekurhuleni and Oxfam have given 20 percent of the budget. This is not the only project that we have. We also have a recycling cooperative in Actonville that was handed over on November 1. All the achievements show that we have a partnership that works and is there to develop and change the lives of the communities.”
MMC Shongwe urged members of the three cooperatives to look after the facility and ensure that they secured and managed their facility.
Meanwhile the EU representative Mr van Uythem said they have a formal strategic partnership with South Africa. He added it is one of only 10 in the world and the only one in Africa.
“This means that we share our concerns about the global and local challenges and that we are committed to addressing them together including through cooperation. We share concerns about the negative impacts of climate change and we are united in the challenge of promoting inclusive growth that offers opportunities for job creation and that is also conducive to a sustainable environment. Jointly, the EU and South Africa have partnered in support of various green initiatives.”
Mr van Uythem explained that in the European Union, addressing climate change and promoting a “green economy” is a top priority.
“We see green economy or the greening of the economy as an opportunity to further our development, to create jobs and become more competitive. More recently we have been focusing also on ‘circular economy’, also referred to as a zero-waste economy.
“We believe it is an objective that makes economic sense in the long term. In fact, if we can be more resource efficient, reduce our dependency on scarce or volatile raw materials, we can also be more competitive.
“In practice, at the moment we are not managing waste as well as we want to in the European Union. Although we have a country such as Sweden recycling 99 percent of their household waste, overall, across the EU a limited share of 40 percent of household waste is recycled. Almost as much is still simply sent for disposal in landfills. In relation to waste management, we have therefore set concrete EU-wide targets such as to recycle 65 percent of municipal waste and to reduce landfill waste to 10 percent by 2030.
“South Africa for its part has also been taking some serious steps to move its green agenda forward and in some aspects, is even more advanced than the European Union. A good example is South Africa’s tyre industry where the public-private initiative, the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) has been successful in recycling tyres while creating opportunities for small enterprises,” added Mr van Uythem.
At Sethokga Waste Minimisation Facility, the chairperson of Matshupela Cooperative, Ms Salphy Nkoana, demonstrated how they operate their recycling equipment to the audience.
Ms Nkoana thanked Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality for the facilities and further thanked the European Union sponsors and Oxfam for the equipment and the new Kia bakkie. The bakkie will be used to collect the bottles, papers, plastics and cans among other materials for recycling.