Mpact Recycling’s ‘Ronnie Bag’ goes green

Don’t fret if your Ronnie Bag changes colour in broad daylight.

Mpact Recycling’s kerbside house-to-house collection programme will be replacing the highly recognisable orange Ronnie Bag with the new green Mpact Recycling bag.

According to Mpact Recycling’s managing director, John Hunt, the replacement of the popular orange bags started this month and targets participating suburbs in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane.

“This will be done in a staggered manner, allowing contractors who usually collect the household recyclables in these areas to simply replace the old orange bag with the new green bag,” Hunt explained.

“We encourage residents to continue to fill up their Ronnie Bags with paper and paper-based products and put them out to be collected on designated days. This can include unwanted magazines, newspapers and cardboard,” Hunt continued.

Mpact Recycling currently collects from almost 200 000 homes based in Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane. Collections are done every week from the kerbside on the same day as the municipal refuse collections.

Mpact Recycling, formerly known as Mondi Recycling, has been offering householders this convenient and hassle-free collection service at no cost for over 20 years.

Currently, paper recycling rates in South Africa are good at around 60 per cent. Mpact Recycling continues to work diligently with various stakeholders including government, business and consumers to further improve recycling rates.

“Paper consumed in people’s homes and offices represents the biggest opportunity to grow paper recycling in South Africa. We urge all communities to embrace recycling programmes such as these as they do not only have direct benefits for the environment, but also create a future for others through job creation.”

Mpact Recycling, part of the Mpact paper and plastics packaging group, is the largest paper recycler in South Africa. The recycling division has seven sites across the country collecting approximately 450,000 tonnes per annum of recovered paper.

“To date we have empowered over 40 entrepreneurial companies to facilitate the company’s collection strategies,” said Hunt, who also suggested that those new to recycling initiatives should start with paper.

“Recycling paper which includes cardboard, old newspapers, magazines, outdated directories or schoolbooks is a simple process that goes a long way to reducing the impact on landfill sites, creating employment and reusing items that are simple to sort and recycle from home.”

Details: www.mpact.co.za