Ward 104 councillor Mike Wood has continued his drive to highlight the different kinds of businesses in his ward, this time at a company seeking to get recycling to be part and parcel of Randburg’s everyday lives.
Whole Earth Recycling is a waste management, recycling and empowerment company based in Strijdom Park and has been running for the past five years.
The company collects mixed recycling including dry recyclables such as paper, cardboard and plastic.
The initiative has a community project seeking to uplift the lives of an estimated 24 sorters who sort through the collected recyclables in the warehouse on Tungsten Road.
The sorters sell the goods from buyers who come to the warehouse, to generate an income for themselves.
Whole Earth Recycling’s Carmen Jordaan said, “Once everyone has finished sorting material for the day, the recyclables are weighed and they are paid at the premises by buyers for the kilograms of materials they have collected. We function like a buy-back centre, except those that are here don’t have to roam the streets looking for bins to dig in or travelling for miles to sell their goods.”
All recyclable goods are collected by households and businesses who have signed up for the initiative in the Randburg area, usually with the help of residents associations, by the company’s trucks on a weekly basis. Residents, complexes, offices and/or the associations are charged a very small fee for the collection per month.
“All goods are separated at the source as we provide households with 10 blue bags per month to separate their own recyclable goods, and we collect once a week. The amazing thing about our service is that whether we collect from 10 households or 100, the cost to us is the same. So it only makes sense that the more communities sign up to our initiative, the less monthly fees there will be for everyone,” she continued.
Fairly recently, the company has started bailing some of the collected materials, making it easier to sell and get a better price for those who sort.
Wood added, “One of my goals this year is to drive recycling initiatives. It really is a major problem and we are running out of landfill sites, and the projection for landfill site capacity in the next five years in Johannesburg is not looking great. I myself am a customer of Whole Earth Recycling and the difference that it has made to recycling in our neighbourhood is immense. I encourage all residents and residents associations who are looking for a solution like this to inquire further.”
Details: www.wholeearth.co.za
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