From Waste to Business: the Circular Economy

okay um hi everyone if you are joining us for the first time my name at rise is thank you for joining us this afternoon for our monthly webinars for those of you who don't know rise is a non-profit social enterprise that operates in research which is a landlocked country in south africa and we focus on economic development through job creation skills development and entrepreneurship we have a specific focus in the build environment and we do this through a hands-on learn by doing fellowship program called in local the fellowship is a design built and environment program where we run it for graduates who studied architecture construction management civil and electrical engineering plumbing carpentry and other disciplines which are related to having a building completed as a building the fellows get a hands-on learning experience while at the same time solving problems in infrastructure ultimately we turn job seekers into job creators and we help them to start their own businesses and we take them through a three-year incubation program once they've graduated from the fellowship where we connect them with mentors co-working space tools clients amongst other resources now i am not alone today i am joined by two gentlemen who operate in the space of the circular economy and we have that as well as before we get to today's topic i'd like to introduce them in their different fields [Music] a graduate from the national university of missouri he had graduated in 2016 with a degree in environmental health he started his own company called maginot always collection and he collected waste from household household and sold recyclable materials to companies that did recycling um a year later he bought a nissan and he was able to collect plastics from dongas and saw this and was able to create employment for one person and then later on was able to get three months contracts and scaled up with ngos and was then able to collect scraps to sell them he then met his future partner who then had a track as well as financial resources and they started the company together jointly for sanitary services where they've been able to tender and manage waste sites here in lesotho welcome that day and we're so excited to hear what you have to say for us today and then our second speaker again from bao um he is a co-founder of the renowned keeper to clean campaign he's an accountant by profession who also works as a business consultant helping young entrepreneurs with financial and business modelling is his absolute passion and he has conducted numerous entrepreneurship workshops all over the country once again gentlemen hi and thank you for joining us are you both still here hi guys likewise so now that we've given our audience a background of who you are and what you do i think it's only fitting that i get to tell our audience why this is such a topic that's very close to our heart so we're talking about the circular economy today if you've just joined us and this is something that we're very passionate about because we're always trying to find ways to have renewable access to business making sure that vasudra starting to learn that you don't always have to have a large amount of capital you can use recyclable material and then start turning that into business literally that's what it's called from waste to business today but to start off we'd like to let people know that if you're ever interested you can always reach out to rise info risen.org and we're more than willing to connect you to the right people such as our guests today on the webinar so without further ado we'd like to start off with the questions and i'd just like to ask you first let the differ because as we know uh you work for inspire innovation and you're about to host i think a business incubation program or something around the circular economy what would you say in simplest terms to people who have no idea is the circular economy okay thank you very much i hope you again you can hear me okay so yes as is as triple situation we have organized a workshop maybe or a week we're going to incubate entrepreneurial entrepreneurs who are who are waiting on the green economy so our aim is to help them understand besides what they already doing in the in the environment space we're trying to make sure they understand the financial aspect of business the legal aspect of business the marketing aspect of the business because most of our young entrepreneurs in the country you may you may find that when they open businesses or they start working as entrepreneurs they mostly focus on the products they are which you want but they for forget the other aspects of the business so we are trying to to help them and understand the market they might have the the financial aspect of those businesses so yes coming to your topic of the day the sexual economy and the second economy i think we should understand that not a single company should be trying to have everything on itself we all have a role to play in the economy and mostly we are used to the linear uh system where every product is produced and we use there after being used it goes to a way so now we are trying to change the mentality of our entrepreneurs to understand that there's a there's a space where they can play where we used to have waste and those ways can be used to make money or they can be used as businesses they can we can regenerate something with those weeks so i think today we will be discussing more about that but before i go into it maybe and i can talk i don't know but yeah i was able to go deeper and maybe yeah all right thank you default um hi elitabili would you like to then answer the same question of in simple terms what would you say the circular economy means or what is it uh thank you very much again for the platform i think for us as mpho tenders uh what secular economy basically means is how do we make money out of uh what people literally call waste because i think there's a huge market for waste globally so what we're trying to what basically for our sake the economy means is let's try to reuse recycle the material that basically is called waste and then bring it back into the into the market as something that can actually cause what unemployment it can cut down a host of factors such as poverty so that for us is simply what we we basically understand basically all right thank you so much for tabitha um and we have another speaker today who's just so kindly joined us on behalf of pear plastic we have tiana hi tiana we're so excited for having you today i'm sure everyone from rise as one of the two gentlemen who joined me would love to hear about who you are just shortly briefly and then we'll get to the questions a bit later okay good morning everyone sorry i was very last minute um looped into this meeting um just apologies on behalf of dimple fani who is supposed to be here today she's been having some phone issues um so i'll just introduce myself my name is tayanna neufeld um i've been with perhap plastic um since the beginning so we've been operational for about a year now um and we operate out of um maurita and so we're a plastic recycling company um and education center all right um yeah all right thank you so much and in your own words in the simplest way to someone who's never heard of the concept of the circular economy what would you say it is um i think the circular economy is is kind of using what you have so using what we already have instead of um investing resources time energy money in creating new product um out of new materials so it's so kind of and and and then the circular part comes in is like when you create something you're creating it in such a way that it can feed right back into um the environment or the community so that you're not creating something that's just going to end up in a landfill someday you're and you're creating something that's creating a loop so that um there's not a beginning and an end it's like these things are going to keep going around and we're going to keep you reusing this plastic or whatever the material might be um but it's not um it's there's no end point at which it's like well this is just garbage and we're gonna throw it away forever yeah thank you so much for terrifying that um this question goes out to you defo we want to know how would you say poor waste management impacts our climate here in lesotho okay um uh particularly when i've been waiting with cheapest cleaning we've engaged a lot with a lot of stakeholders from our what our mcc our street vendors everybody so mostly the effect it affects our businesses so um for our businesses to thrive we need to make sure that our waste is is managed it's managed properly so most of our vendors would complain that customers are not coming because they are concerned about the hygiene standards of the environment their surroundings and our restaurants don't know how to separate waste because you you find they are using the the oil that they use to fry and chips or whatever they dispose it whether you should be disposing maybe water or something so they block the sewage pipes or so yeah the concern is our waste management is affecting our businesses negatively and our our [Music] our water is uh contaminated you know here in myself we're not treating clean water so even our water is is contaminated so a lot of things are affected our our soil our agricultural space it's being affected negatively because crops are no longer proven the same way um our what um even our kind of what's this the the the wasa was trying hard to to clean our water but it's bad it's very in the county so i think we need to to to really work hard on educating our business people our communities how to manage waste how to separate waste because some of the things are being done because there's no nobody knows how to how to how to how to how to manage waste so education is to be taken out there and we need to solve it because especially for businesses our economy is down because people can manage waste properly and we can't even market our business because everywhere it's stage here okay thank you very much and that did differ for that very detailed answer um this one is for you how do you think recycling creates employment and it's trying to reduce the prominent issue of use unemployment that is rising in resort okay i think uh when we talk about recycling and job creation uh i think we just have to go back to the statistics uh the recycling industry was supposedly worth 260 million us dollars back in 2000 in 2016. and if you look at how big the market is it means that they still like it is one of the biggest employers so when we come back we come here to illustrate we look at the biggest uh job the biggest people get jobs from uh recycling would have to be women i i tell people that in this short period that we've worked with recycling the last seven years because in business seven years is a very short time we find the biggest race collectors are basically women i i i i was speaking with a friend of mine telling them that you know whenever somebody says are recycling and youth unemployment i i'm very i literally say i i'm literally scared when we say that in this country because we find that a lot a lot of people are into recycling in this country but you find that women because women have become uh heads of households in this country we find they are the most involved people in recycling indirectly as waste pickers because we buy from waste speakers and then use the recyclables and then build the recyclables for for sale in south africa or here in the country so i think when we talk about unemployment i think recycling creates and it's one of the biggest markets are the biggest job creators in this country because i i can't if you look at that so they dump inside me you have 135 people working in there who we buy directly we buy directly the waste directly from them so just ask for a whole host of companies that buy waste from them and then you look at uh the pool that we have outside we have about 50 women that we buy waste from outside right here in massachusetts we we're talking about mastery only but if you go into the district there's women as well who sell these recyclables to other companies so i'd say plus minus 500 people get jobs directly from either directly or directly from recycling i think all right thank you so much for those uh statistics and i guess we're able to realize that it's not just waste it actually creates employment and income this one goes to tiana on behalf of pear plastic why would you say it's important for barcelona to adapt a recycling culture um well for for to to kind of um hop onto the the coattails of like just just to um acknowledge the value that recycling has or that these recyclable materials have you know um that there's there's economic value to recycling number one and there's opportunities that aren't being fully capitalized on number one number two i mean um without going into like the whole reason for environmentalism but like there's so little being done in the c2 and in regards to recycling that we have to start somewhere and we have to start now i mean we should have started 50 years ago but where the planet is is is the one that we've got and there's so little being done um to create just health in our in our communities in terms of um you um plastic waste or any other kinds of waste you know we don't have waste management systems um in place in most of our communities or at least though are not adequate ones if there are some in place so it's it's not only it shouldn't only be a personal issue um like personally trying to contribute to recycling um and a circular economy but it needs to also filter up into our municipal governments and our our local governments um so that more is being done on on a larger more organized level um but back to your original question like why is it important um i mean to live to live healthy lives um trash plastic trash waste is not going away and the more that we pile on um the the more unhealthy our communities get yeah thank you so much for that very insightful answer this definitely is a learning curve for all of us i'm sure even our audience is learning so much from what you've just said all three of you which then i guess brings us to the next question for therefore what measures can be taken to get young people in the country to get involved and more interested to participate in growing the circular economy okay thank you yeah i think um first of all we need to identify how how are we going to get the youth people so i think we should use the platforms that they are already using like we are using facebook and other social medias to share the content that you are now we are now teaching about so sharing content on facebook about these issues uh the the security economy educating them on this kind of topics i think they it will help them while they are still struggling to find jobs and everything see the opportunities that are out there for them so i think if we can talk more about these things they will understand they need to play a role in this and they can still make a living out of waste or something like that so i think first of all we need to educate people and after that i think it's more about uh getting the stakeholders involved like the government we need to have the policies the waste management policies as people certainly are still trying to to to propose something like that to the government but we need to have those uh supporting uh supporting initiatives we need to have those laws that are out there so that when these people come and get involved in this kind of environmental issues or sexual economy there are laws that support those kind of initiatives or businesses so i think it's education getting the stakeholders involved so that uh the country itself needs to transform so they need to be maybe a political will or something like that so that things can happen and we need the organizations need to to to play a role in that so that we we are able to fund uh organizations that are involved in environmental issues uh businesses that are involved they should get trans financial support and then i think the country is a will with the bulk detention all right thank you so much default um this one goes out to plastic which recycling or green initiatives would you say speak mostly to you or are the ones where you've seen the biggest change or impact here in the country i see that dimple has joined us um jim paul do you want to answer this one well i was waiting to answer the one with the numbers hello everyone i'm sorry i'm late uh and my voice is a bit muffled but so far outside plastic um [Music] i think uh honestly there isn't really much that i think we're doing uh in the social even as i speak for her plastic there's so much to be done but i think um i am very very uh encouraged by i don't see if he's here uh had dirty um and the way he's been going about using plastic so i think that his initiative is really the one that i support a lot and i would love to see it grow more um and i know that he's he's trying to also uh involve education as part of what he does and so i would like to see that happen as as perhaps that's the biggest that's part of what we do and as and also if you look at secular economy it's not something that is known in the city and so that means we have so much work to be done in educating people about what secular economy is even the word recycling is still a bit of a problem for a lot of people so yeah all right thank you so much tim paul um because you just joined us and i'm sure people in the audience would like to know because we've just gotten information you went to europe i believe for some training on recycling do you want to give us a bit of insight on that um well it wasn't it wasn't really training on recycling it was training on renewable energy uh wind farms specifically because the company that helped me start pair plastic is a wind company they're trying to develop uh bring winter turbines wind farms in mercedes and mahalis hook and so we're trying to see um how that will impact the pseudo or if listen to even needs that um and these are also very very different areas mahali suk for one is very rural for what uh for many other things for one people don't have access to internet there and access to a lot of things and so how will uh us bringing wind turbines change their lives for the better what is it that apart from just putting those structures there that um hironu plans to to to to bring to mahalissa and even masite and so it's still a it's still an ongoing right now we're waiting for mahalisik to be approved so that we can start on the sensitization and going to teach people about what renewable energy is what hiring is trying to do and also trying to figure out what is it that the people in mahaluk actually need and how do we best fit it into hirundu's mission and vision to be able to support what or what is already happening there and also obviously that will mean that peja will also be involved highly in that as it's like um a baby of hirundu so uh it's just time to tackle the general thing of climax climate change okay that sounds really exciting and we're so glad you're you're in a place or a space where you more than willing to share this with other person to you who'd love to get into the same scope of work that you're in um for those of you who just joined us welcome to our monthly webinars at rise hosts please do post your questions either on the live facebook video chat or here on our zoom chat um we're joined by at this point four people who are really doing well as young muscle to use um or in this case tiana is also a partner of pair plastic in the circular economy in lesotho so we'd like to know from all of you how much do you think the circular economy is worth globally we'll start with for tavis are you still with us yeah sorry hello hi yes i'm sorry i had a i had a metric problem it's okay no i just asked um it's a question for all of you but i started with you like how much do you think or do you know and have the specific numbers of how much globally the circular economy is worth i think uh like i said uh uh with the research that we have in this country when you if you look at the documents we have they date back to 2016 when it was around around 260 million uh us dollars back then and then it was supposedly supposed to go with 17 percent annually so if you take if you go back to 2016 and then you increa you implement the increment by that 17 it's a lot of there's a lot of money and it's a lot of job jobs that are being created i think yeah that's a very good answer um dfo do you want to add on to whatever said hello okay uh i'm not i'm not sure about the numbers specifically but yeah the the the secular economy is the ongoing thing right now so i wouldn't say much different from what he said but yeah yeah i i think i'm not sure about the numbers to be specific even if it's not about the numbers are you in a position to say in the next five years this would be a sector that's generating a lot of income for the global economy yeah yes yes yes yeah for sure because then if you can see in in our country right now uh couple globally globally the the the circular economy it's one of those things like uh technology it's a growing market so i do believe that in the next five years uh you we're going to have more companies shifting their model business model to accommodate more a secular way of operating so if you can if you do know that there's what you call a secular business model where it's a similar thing like a secular economy so it's where businesses are adapting the system where they are making sure that whatever they are producing it's being reinvented or they are recycling their products to an extent that it keeps going on and on in a secular manner so i think in the next five years the most businesses will be adopting the model all right thank you so much default um let's go out to whatever and tiana we've already heard from our other two panelists what would you then add on about telling the audience or even us as rise do you think that this is a sector that's going to be leading the global economy if you have any statistics to back it up this is just really for our own knowledge there's no right or wrong answer are you sure yeah yeah i'll add on the end okay um so according to according to what's this called according to world business council um transitioning to a secular economy will or can unlock gdp growth of 4.5 trillion by 2030. that's the number i have at this point i think globally i think we have like 8.6

of secular um and so that means uh according to this what i'm reading is that we need like about 8.4 uh to get to a number that we can say is good enough to boost the economies um and also to add um moving towards a secular economy uh is gonna help a lot of businesses get ahead um and also we need to have a policy readiness you know um regulations uh pride pricing because this is a a new um industry for a lot of us and so i think i think there's huge potential but as i keep saying i think also there's a lot of education that still needs to be um shared and awareness okay thank you we're here from canada now yeah i was just gonna add on like i don't have any figures for you but i think i think this is going to be a growing sector in the next um decade um and decades to come um because it is such a um there's just there's there's such a squeeze right now on the earth and the resources and we can also already see that things are changing um on on the planetary scale and what we need now is buy-in from our government so that so that there are resources available for businesses that are trying to um trying to make it work um in in the circular economy locally but we need we need support and we need legs up from our our local governments to make these businesses um easy to set up and easy to run um because right now that's not the case and so yeah it it if there's such an opportunity for growth i think we just have to not be held back because there's so many there's so many creative thinkers in lucy too and there's so many opportunities like even us there's only so much that we can do like we cannot be the only recycling company in this country um there's so much more space for other people to get involved um but there there needs to be support and there needs to be um information and resources made available absolutely i agree so much with what you just said um what we need to really drive home to our audience is that all of you are entrepreneurs and you were so brave enough to venture into a field that no one was even willing to understand what it is and i think it's only fair enough to share some of what you say are the most memorable experiences you have when you first started out um we heard from your body in the beginning that you started off on your own collecting waste household to household i'm sure you have a lot you can tell us about of your early days in business thank god if i go back and then just uh try to reflect and say one of what what are one of the best moments i've heard i think it would be just the beginning because we came up with an initiative see how household ways me everybody was just collating it and collecting it and taking product inside we came up with an initiative that of integrated weight management we collected waste from households sorted the waste and then your plastic your pet your hdpe and then we just sorted the weight and then went out and the market he just looked for the market and we got there i think just coming up with an idea that you know all that is being maintained for us is still one of those the biggest highlights that we've ever achieved as a business because we shine away from the everyday uh collect and throw business so we went into something that okay we collect we sort and then we we collect and then bring it to our plants and then stop the waste and then you'd find that eighty percent of what we collected from households is actually recyclable so i think for us coming up with such a great initiative is still one of the best moments that we did not sitting outside working with a whole host of ngos on some of our projects we cannot drag them off but i think the fact that we just it was a fresh idea for us back then i think it's still so one of the best moments we did absolutely that sounds like it was such an integral part of your journey and please continue doing what you're doing you're inspiring other young people who probably didn't know it was possible but through you they're getting inspired um what would you say inspired you or motivated you to get involved with the keeper social cleaning campaign because the reality is people think of waste or recycling they're just like no i'm not getting involved with such oh okay yeah and for me it was never planned so what happened is we organized its senior a cleaning campaign first so once we we did the first thing up and all the volunteers that were there i think after that cleanup we had a meeting about 22 of us or less and that's where the idea came out so it was never planned to to stress that kapoho to get involved in as much as we did right now so yeah we just came up with the idea and then we started establishing what would it take for us to really have an impact so we came up with about five pillars or six pillars that will really really really help us to move so we had we had this legal and institution department we had education and awareness we had media and communication and business and innovation stakeholders and partners then we did research so after we have identified those things that's when we started saying okay where what where in this circular economy or in this field word we wonder where we want to play so we have got to have plastic who are already doing what they are doing so we said okay let's just have let's just be a catalyst so we we we connect all these organizations that are already doing what they're doing in the environmental space and we we try to find out where can we help them where where is it that they need to be assisted so that that's that's just keep listening it's it's it's a it's a catalyst we we we try to help each and every organization that is already existing or who if anyone was trying to get involved in the clean economy or the the secular economy sector so yeah that that that was the idea and that's what really inspired us well that's a good initiative and i'm glad you guys decided to just get it going um to dimpo and tiana let's just hear your story pear plastic literally that means you cook plastic that's the sort of translation in basic words what what like what happened for you guys to just decide to get started i'm sure this is such an interesting story um wow where do i start uh well it started with a treat um but um i think artie and i have been involved with plastic way before perhaps started in musead center we have a plastic fantastic um i don't know if you're aware that she leaves with plastic and she had done a lot of things with plastic and so i think for us it was just natural to go into that direction but for me my personal journey is that when i moved back to malaysia i wanted i wanted to do something that was bigger than myself and um i tried to do so many things i tried to knit which i was sucked very badly and and going to the hub change literally changed my life because uh it's it's i think it's where my journey with climate change started and so after after we had the first session i think with climate change i was for sure that i wanted to be doing something about that and i had only just had recycling like everyone else and only to think to find out recycling is actually more complex than uh what everyone else seems to think and so um i had this idea that i want to have a recycling it initially was a recycling corner which would be at the marijuana center space but um the more i learned the more i realized how complex it is but i still maintain that i wanted a recycling corner and so this is where sorry this is where the treat comes in and so through there many awareness campaigns animations and many things that we did with the hub i started tweeting about them for a long time and i was actually about to give up because i would literally get two retreats or literally one like and i was like okay well nobody cares about climate change there was no engagement nothing at all until um i got an inbox from some guy from belgium who was interested in what we're doing in malaysia and so he wanted to know what is it that i do what are all this animations about and i told him everything literally everything that happens in mauritia the hub mujah center the artist and and then they wanted to know what i wanted to do what is it that i wanted to do about climate change just like well recycling corner or center would be a start and so um i think if we we had conversations up and going emails and whatnot just trying to hear what is it that i want do i know um have i done enough research uh until i rise i actually didn't know anything and so i think fast forward they decided well we'll we've found recycled machines and we're going to buy them and so do the recycling then and so tiana and i started now we have to actually have to now learn how this thing works you know because we didn't know anything about hdpe or pet or any of those things and so we we started learning about everything on youtube and some of the materials that we were getting from the people who built the machines and it's been exciting because there was two of us there for a while just uh assembling and putting machines together and getting burnt by the plastic and um and so i think the most inspiring thing for me ever since we've started has been me standing in front of the skills and super kids at the hub uh because i was once that kid who sat there and had a rise international come and talk about architecture and have all these amazing people come and talk about so many things and so now finally for me to stand there and hear these kids chant back hdpe pet all this types of plastic has been one of the most amazing feelings of my life and so yeah that's my journey wow that's such a beautiful journey jimpo um thank you so much for sharing that with us uh tiana do you want to add on to what dupu has said so far or she's covered everything basically i i mean jim she's covered [Music] [Music] and have a vehicle to um create change within our community and i'd echo that and say like seeing the kids um come to peja with the correct types of plastic and they're washed and they're cleaned and it's it's just it's so heartwarming to see that they're recognizing um the value that this plastic can have in their own lives and they know now how to keep it from ending up in our environment yeah all right great um yeah i think we've gotten enough content to understand what it is you're all doing and i must say it's really remarkable and inspiring um i once again if you're watching us thank you for joining us you've just joined our monthly webinars that we as rise hosts if you have any questions for our panelists please do post in the live facebook video chat or if you're joining us here on zoom please post your question in the chat box um now that we've recaptured sorry to interrupt hi everyone i'm the founder of rise and the background here just there's been a few questions um in the chat on facebook um for mpho uh at rita billy just to um outline exactly what it is you recycle um so for those people who can't see that in the chat box maybe rhetoria you'd like to um to just tell tell people what what it is you you recycle what materials you recycle okay uh like i indicated uh we we have uh uh we are a full-scale recycling company our plastic we say plastic recycling company that means we buy back your pet that is your soft drinks your everyday soft drinks soft drink bottles we also buy your hdpe that is your your cosmetic uh your everyday cosmetic containers plastic cosmetic containers so you'd find that the label plastic number two we also buy ldpe your ldp is your everyday plastic bags normally here at home they're called egg checkers and then we also buy poly prop uh those your your buckets and then you find that version number five as well i think uh as we're also venturing into e-waste we are venturing to e-waste we're just waiting authorization from the minister of environment will send our our buzzer permit our requirements uh and also our recycling uh we we're also venturing into our recycling uh so those two are awaiting uh approval from the ministry of environment so that is that is basically what we do as mpho super thank you so much sorry i'll uh i'll be looking out for more questions or comments in the facebook chat box that's it for now okay um yeah thanks for looking up for the questions then um yeah i think at this point what we just want to know is what does the future hold for all of you and do you feel like there's opportunities for growth in the country um i think therefore you can start us off okay um as for us as people secretly we we really hope get more involved with all the organizations that are watching and businesses that are watching in the space so [Music] we're trying to push the our we have a website where we are trying to combine all the organizations that are involved and where they can share that maybe what what what what what they are struggling with or the issues that may arise so that when when we approach because our main focus is at which is so we are trying to understand them how how they work and what what what are the struggles that they they face during their their daily work or isn't as an industry so we we hope one day we can help them we can have that uh what sort of an organization or where we all we can communicate and establish the laws and regulations of this industry so yeah i think that's the future for cheaper city and we still maintain we we want to to advocate we want to educate pursuit about uh waste management and everything that is involved okay uh that sounds interesting and i'm sure people who are watching us can already hear how they can get involved with this initiative um but what's next from paul sanitary and cleaning services uh i think what's next for us is literally going big uh going back whether we get funding or we have to ride the capital for ourselves we want to open a full scale recycling factory inherits food because look uh if we create we are buying all this plastic and some of it exporting it we're not doing the best that is the best thing is is opening up a fraction here head home uh pelletizing the plastic and then molding it into whatever we want to do and then just imagine how many jobs we can create we can instead of just having uh i think uh in this country that the biggest employer is the the clubbing sector through us through to its countries how about we bring back the weight the way that we have in this country and then just use it as one of the biggest employers as through that i think for us the biggest what's next for us is creating full-scale a recycling plant in this country i think just to cover up the question that you asked detective and some of the challenges that we are facing in this country i think if you look at we hold we hold the whole there are lots of stakeholder meetings in this country but what really are the challenges that we make are not are not really tackled because if i was reading an article on the on the on the newspaper that was talking about a stakeholder meeting that was held by the minister of environment but unfortunately did not have uh the private sector if i told you that for you to export uh plastic waste or any other waste you have to get an high-tech permit from south africa so the problem that we have is that south africa has revoked its i-tech permits for pet it means that we can no longer export pete into the car into south africa and pete is one of the biggest uh waste uh plastic waste uh plastic waste that we have in in the country is that without the government actually coming back to us your ngos your participating your paraplastic and actually asking us what are some of the challenges i think will never solve the whole issue of pronunciation we cannot lobby we cannot talk about policy without first no uh do we wanna okay um i'm so excited for the new plastic recycling factory that you want to start with um please do let people know how they can get involved with that because i think i saw a question on facebook saying if you and the difference can uh leave your contact details in the chat box um last but not least tiana dimpo what's next for pear plastic um wow i just want to comment before i say anything on what ability just said because pet is such a problem and if that what you just said is true it means it's going to become more of a problem especially because even less pain we do not recycle pet so i'm just wondering what's the next step for that um so the next steps for paraplastic is that unfortunately for me um i've been attending a workshop um by the undp to capacitate women enterprises and so um i think for me the plan right now we celebrated one year in may 29th of perhaps and it made me aware of so many things that i'm reflecting on many things that need to have set up um because also i realize there's a lot of assumptions that we are such a big capacity we are not at that level yet but the plan right now is we are actually going to remodeling sort of creating a business plan that is more sustainable because i've been i don't think that's something that i had done in the beginning because i honestly didn't want the business part of it but i guess i have no way out now so that's the the next the next month i'll be working with a mentor from undp in creating um a sustainable business plan for pejor and i would like to stay there because then after that it's just more and more of programming that we want to do and getting more involved we are very excited to collaborate and we want to collaborate more with anyone who's recycling please attempt to come check this pet so yeah all right thank you jimpo um you can already hear she's got business for you already so this was that's a fruitful session for you um tiana anything else sorry you don't have what were you saying i i think it's it's it's it's been a good one for me today on um tiana you want to add on i'm sure yeah so we've just one of our machines has been down for the last six months or so we've been missing our plinth part so we just got it um back up and running our extruder machine and i'm particularly excited about it because now we're creating um like a long thin kind of thread made of plastic um some people are actually using this plastic to do 3d printing and i've seen it done on youtube but we're not quite there yet but trying to find new ways to use recycled plastic in a local context and i mean i'm an artist so i'm just really excited to to explore um with weaving techniques i mean weaving is an industrial suit as well so how can we tie plastic recycling to the creative industries that are happening in the c2 and already here and that's kind of where my passion um my passions get ignited when thinking about the future of plastic is how can we make more art you know and find more for more um markets um for these products so that we can you know in turn create more artisans and and create more entrepreneurs and kind of have it trickle down so that's what i'm excited about for sure uh yeah we're also excited um thank you so much once again to everyone for agreeing to be part of our monthly webinars uh this was such an insightful conversation i learned so much today my co-host daniela learned so much today hopefully our audience as well online and here on zoom learn so much today um in the chat box yeah there's a in fact there's a there's a lovely comment from one of the uh listeners on facebook um from cherry uh mangagane saying dope conversations above everything education is instrumental to transforming our business ethos to that of cradle to cradle big ups to the panelists for their dope work so exactly using his words this was a really dope session and please everybody remember before you round up uh reid just a reminder you've got a link in the chat there both on zoom and facebook to everybody to complete um the survey uh to tell us what your thoughts are about um the topic today and what kind of topics you'd like to hear about in future so please do complete that before we we end the next couple of minutes because that link will uh will disappear off of the zoom call and it will stay on the on our facebook page but thank you so much to all the panelists that was really really insightful we really learned a lot and it's great to hear that there's more companies going into this sector there's so much more opportunity and i'm sure after people too clean do their boot camp um maybe i'm sure uh rei's going to give you all a chance to do a 30-second round-up um but please tell us all how we can all how people can get in touch with you and uh and i'm sure there's going to be a lot more startups coming up after that keepersu cleans um uh bootcamp that is taking place in a couple of weeks time so this is really really exciting and to finally see things moving in the right direction um at least on the on the entrepreneurship side then then the other structures with with government and so on will hopefully come into play as well and we will be sharing this this this link to to help influence and advocate um and promote this sector for sure so thanks everybody over to yuri yeah thanks dan um but yes i guess closing off if you can all just let us know how do people reach you and how can they get involved in any initiatives how can they volunteer and any of that if you need the help um therefore i think the best way to ask you is how do people get involved with keep yourself clean you can take it from there i'm sure all right we have a facebook page we have a website so if you want to get in touch with us you can just drop us a message on facebook from there there's there's also some contacts on facebook page and our website so if you want to get involved anyhow because what we do is help people organize whatever they want to do that has to do with their own environmental issues so if you want to get involved and let's communicate we can have a phone call you can just uh highlight us in facebook yes all right great i think i'll be dropping you guys a message every now and again then to probably yep um so yeah that's how do we reach you and how do we volunteer because this whole plastic um what did you say a workshop or like a factory i'm sure people want to get involved how do we help you how do we reach you yo i'm new her diabetes you're unmute yes sorry i was happy that i forgot that i wasn't mute but basically yeah the first question is uh how do you get ahold of us i think for us uh you can still follow our facebook page must not voice collection we're still using the old company name for facebook uh you can also uh whatsapp us on plus 266 564-8673 i think uh though you can get a hold of us on on those platforms and then how do you help us please just go i think they initiated by paraplastic and uh the hub you know those those small recycled corners those you can create your recycling cooperatives back home and then we back back we promise we'll buy from those researching corporations please lea play a big role that's how you can help us okay sounds good and if we want to volunteer how do we go about that uh i think for us because we have a company we we [Music] we don't carry out initiatives we just support because for instance we are we are affiliated with uh keep disappointing we have we are affiliated with uh melody monkey brewery through our programs so for us we we volunteer a lot we don't we don't tell people to volunteer all right great stuff all right and last but not least i have a question for you okay um how do we donate plastic or other waste materials to and paul oh just uh i think we we have we have a system of collections uh you guys you just tell us how much waste you have so that we're able to organize how much what sort of transport we bring to you guys that's how we take it we'll take it from there okay awesome thanks yes um over to you tiana and you put the closures off of how do we reach you and how can we be of any assistance to pair of plastic uh tiana and i think just lost dimple i think import just cut out um yeah so we're in mauritia people can follow us on instagram on twitter and on um facebook underscore plastic and then they can contact us on whatsapp as well i don't have the number of right in front of me i'm so sorry um but we are yeah or you can you can visit us in murija um there's signs posted from from the post office so yeah or get in touch with jim porter um she's yeah she's our plastic boss lady and she'll set you in right all right um thanks for that and then thank you once again to all of you for going to your panelists and to the audience for spending your lunch hour with us we have these webinars every month uh on the last thursday of the month we just had to move it to the first thursday of the month due to last week being a very very long holiday um if there's of course any additional topics like my co-host daniela mentioned there's a link in the server in the chat box sorry to a survey of basically what type of topics you want to hear because we're trying to create a platform of awareness around new topics or topics that people don't really have that much light on um if you want to follow us we are on all the social media platforms on facebook linkedin instagram even tick tock believe it or not uh we have that orange yeah tik tok we have that orange logo it's called rise and we're more than happy to always interact and um we're looking always to engage thank you once again for the wonderful contributions we had and have a rise field day bye everyone sorry oh hi jim paul can you please share um the link on whatsapp daniella the google's farm thingy the savvy okay thank you you're on mute then yes certainly sure will do thanks again everybody thanks for your time thanks for tuning in everyone take care bye

2022-06-15 18:14

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