MechChem Africa May-June 2022

EPR legislation a benefit, not a burden As companies navigate the new mandatory extended producer responsibility (EPR) landscape, a leading recycler in the plastics value chain has revealed the unexpected ease in managing its new reporting and compliance requirements as a producer. ⎪ Local manufacturing and food processing ⎪ O ne of the biggest recyclers of PET plastic bottles on theAfrican con tinent, Extrupet, has been guided in its journey by long-standing

producer responsibility organisationPETCO. At the same time – and in a first for South Africa –Extrupet is helping its long-time part ner to develop an additional end-use market for recycledPET (rPET) in themanufacture of rPET industrial strapping. Plastic strapping is used extensively to secure unstable goods during transit. From a circular economy perspective, both PET bottles and PET strapping can be diverted from landfill and economically recovered and recycled into newproducts, without compro mising the quality of the end product. As a manufacturer of strapping, Extrupet, like other packaging producers, is now ob ligated either to join an existing producer responsibility organisation (PRO), start a new PRO or run an individual compliance scheme, aspartof theNational Environmental ManagementWasteAct (NEMWA)Section18 mandatory EPR regulations, which came into effect on November 5 last year. Extrupet is currently the only strapping producer registered to meet its manda tory EPR obligations with the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. In terms of the regulations, producers must take practical and financial responsibil ity for the full lifecycle of their products. This means designing packagingwith recyclability andcircularity inmindandalso includingmore recycled content in their products. “Many companies are still importing rPET strapping, so closing the loop locally provides another high-value end-use for rPET, aside from bottle-to-bottle recycling, or turning it into polyester staple fibre,” said Extrupet joint managing director ChandruWadhwani. While clear PET plastic bottles have the highest commercial value for bottle-to-bottle recycling, Wadhwani explained that green and brown PET bottles have limited end-use products associatedwith them, because they discoloured the recyclate and could not be used for bottle-to-bottle recycling. “In the past, plastic strapping has provided a viable end-usemarket for coloured rPET. As producers begin tomove away fromcoloured to clear bottles formaximumrecyclability, the clear bottles can now also serve as feedstock for strapping,” he said. “I would like to encour age companies to support homegrown circu

Dilip Jade, technical director of PET recycler, Extrupet, examines the company’s new Sima line in Cape Town, which produces various types of recycled PET (rPET) strapping.

lar initiatives. The more end-use markets we develop for rPET, themore thebenefitswill be felt along the entire value chain – right down to the waste pickers.” PETCOCEOCheri Scholtz said theSection 18 regulations essentially compelled all organisations and companies involved along the plastics value chain to work as a team to ensure that less waste ended up in landfill. In terms of the regulations, every brand owner, converter, or retailer that places more than 10 t/a of identified plastic packaging onto the consumermarket is deemedaproducer and is required to pay an EPR fee per tonne. “It’s a welcome step forward in creating a circular economy and ensuring a transparent system,” said Scholtz. The knock-on effect of mandatory EPR is set to be heightened investment in infra structure to support the sustainability of the recycling sector – fromthewastepickerswho collect recyclables, to the buy-back centres who purchase and re-sell the materials, and the large-scale recyclers who turn these into recyclate that canbemade intonewproducts. “Without EPR, wewouldn’t beable to scale collection and recycling rates sufficiently to make a meaningful difference to the amount of packaging waste that ends up in the envi ronment each year,” she said. Wadhwani said there was a delicate bal ance between collection, recycling capac ity and demand for rPET in the recycling valuechain. “As theonlySection18-registered strapping producer in SouthAfrica, our strap ping helps tomaintain that balance by provid ing another end-usemarket for rPET. Growth

in rPET production and consumption is ulti mately key to ensuring the sustainability of both the PET and recycling industry,” he said. Describing the process of registering as a producermember of anexperiencedPRO like PETCOas “smooth andeasy”,Wadhwani said: “PETCOonboarded us seamlessly, guiding us through the process of setting andmeasuring targets, and making a potentially complex compliance process seem like plain sailing.” Scholtz attributed this ease to the knowl edge and experience born of 17 years of operating as a voluntary EPR body. “We’ve always had audited collection and recycling figures, which allowed us to demonstrate a direct link between waste collection and recycling targets,” she explained. “Although PETCO will have to adapt slightly tomeetmandatoryEPRrequirements and support newmembers innewways, wedo have the advantage of experience over other PROs who may just be getting started.” Strapping falls into the PET flexibles cat egorywhere legislated targets state that 50% of theproductmust comprise rPET, 10%must be collected, and 9% recycled. PETCO and Extrupet will be working together to achieve thesemandated targets. “MandatoryEPRhas created a space for us to expand our services, starting with a natural extension of the post consumer PET bottles by including the bottle caps and labels,” Scholtz said. “Extrupet’s inclusion as a strapping pro ducer also broadens PETCO’s portfolio of products, for whichwe offer an EPR scheme,” she concludes. petco.co.za

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