South African producer responsibility organisation Polyco has announced that South African communities have collected more than 41-million kilogrammes of waste material, and earned themselves more than R50-million, through the organisation’s flagship Packa-Ching initiative. This waste, including plastics, cans, glass and paper, would otherwise have gone to landfills.

Polyco made this possible by providing, under the Packa-Ching initiative, static and mobile buy-back centres in communities with no recycling infrastructure. In these communities, discarded recyclable materials were collected by waste pickers. The development of partnerships between the buy-back centres and the local waste pickers was essential to the success of the initiative.

The waste pickers also sorted the waste before handing it into the buy-back centres and were paid in cash vouchers would could be spent in a number of local stores. This supported livelihoods and families, through generating income.

“It is important that we celebrate the efforts of all our Packa-Ching enterprises,” affirmed Polyco CEO Patricia Pillay. “They have been the head of a movement to empower communities to champion waste management.”

Secure and transparent transactions were facilitated by Polyco’s WeighPay app. This also collected real-time data that supported the country’s extended producer responsibility system. The app strengthened accountability through the Packa-Ching network and allowed the programme’s increasing impact to be accurately monitored.

To date, 48 buy-back centres have been set up, across the country, supported by major partners such as Shoprite and Sasol. This year alone has seen the introduction of ten new 6 m Packa-Ching units, deployed across the country. Each of these units is operated by a trained local enterprise, thereby creating jobs and local capability, and so ensured the long-term community ownership of the recycling infrastructure.  

Polyco recently held a Packa-Ching gala evening in Cape Town, to recognise the best-performing recycling enterprises in its network. The Top Plastics Collector Award and the Community Impact Award both went to Mpilenhle Trading Enterprise. The Largest Recycling Collection – Women-led Enterprise Award went to The Waste Trade Company. The Largest Recycling Collection – Youth-led Enterprise Award went to KU Green Hands (youth being defined as the age group from 18 to 35). And the Waste Picker Partnership Award went to the Mmula Group.