Community-run recycling initiative receives much-needed equipment

The Tembisa Self Help Association of the Disabled (T-SHAD) is a community based development programme initiated in 1990.

PETCO is supporting the great work undertaken by T-SHAD through the sponsorship of much-needed protective equipment and recycling infrastructure.

T-SHAD established a self-help factory with various income generating projects where people with disabilities can thrive and deliver a meaningful service to their community.

They currently have 65 disabled beneficiaries, consisting of 19 male youths and 18 female youths, 17 adult men and 11 adult women, and their projects range from gardening, recycling and wheelchair-repairs to computer training.

T-SHAD is also a buy-back centre for recyclables, collecting PET, paper and glass. They currently collect an average of two tonnes of PET every month and plan to grow this through various arrangements with the malls, taverns, hospitals and clinics in Tembisa to collect their recyclables.

PETCO partnered with T-SHAD in 2016, providing them with assistance and supplying them with basic equipment, such as a scale to weigh recyclables, bulk bags for storage and separation of recyclables, and protective gloves. As a key focus for us is to improve the jobs and conditions for collectors and collection businesses in South Africa and to facilitate the collection of PET for recycling, we will now be supporting them further with training and mentorship, to enable the growth of their business, personal protective equipment (PPE), to ensure their safety, and a baling machine, to compact the bottles for easy and efficient transport.

PETCO looks forward to working with T-SHAD and helping to grow their recycling business, for the benefit of the beneficiaries, the community they operate in, and South Africa as a whole.

An industry-driven environment solution for PET

PETCO is the trading name of the PET Recycling Company NPC, a company incorporated in 2004 to represent the South African PET plastic industry’s joint effort to self-regulate post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PET) recycling.

PETCO’s unique model is built on the simple principle of an industry driven and financed environmental solution for post-consumer PET plastic. The PET plastics industry acknowledges that the convenience and life-saving qualities of plastics aside, a solution for post-consumer plastic packaging is critical in order to minimise its impact on the environment.

To achieve this everyone involved, from the raw material producers, the converters, brand owners, retailers, consumers and recyclers are playing their part in the solution, with PETCO fulfilling the PET industry’s role of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

EPR promotes the integration of environmental costs associated with PET products throughout their life cycles into the market costs of the products, and shifts responsibility for the used container from government to private industry.