# Recycling in SA?



## ROKZY (Feb 25, 2009)

Does anyones have ideas about what can be recycled in SA how to do it?


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## Daxk (Jan 20, 2008)

Rokzy, apart from a few small iniatives, SA has huge potential for recycling.
but it already creates employment.
Have a look outside on Rubbish Collection day, see those guys rummaging through your bin for Glass, Beercans and scrap metal?
Now imagine how nice it would be for the rubbish Collection company to give you each a blue bin for tins, a Red one for Bottles and a green one for Compostable waste,
As an improvement to time and motion it would be great, the Rummagers would'nt have to spill last weeks food scraps on your Pvement, they could just download the Ally and glass, the rubbish Collection truck could do its rounds in half the time as the bins would be empty,

Just joking Rokzy, there are lots of opportunities for re-cycling, I once owned a slice of a company that recovered the silver nitrate from used govt x-rays.
Until I realised what the working conditions were doing to the staff.
and how carcinogenic the process was.
I think there is still a huge opportunity to collect and recycle sharps for surgical steel as the guys who have been doing it have been a bit lax on input control.
but you will need to have a BEE partner.


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## Americano (Mar 3, 2009)

Hi Rox,

Currently at Going Green might be a good start - hope it's a help!


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## Martinw (Jan 2, 2009)

I once owned a slice of a company that recovered the silver nitrate from used govt x-rays.
Until I realised what the working conditions were doing to the staff.
and how carcinogenic the process was.
I think there is still a huge opportunity to collect and recycle sharps for surgical steel as the guys who have been doing it have been a bit lax on input control.
but you will need to have a BEE partner.[/QUOTE]

Daxk, how weird is that - I Worked for an inspection company that did industrial xrays on welds and pipes etc. and these guys used to come every now and then and collect the sliver nitrate from our film fixer. All we knew is that they didnt pay to bad for it and my boss always gave us each R100 or so. I never knew/prob never looked into the actual process of extracting the silver from it - Wow unbelievable, but then again if you look at the horrible stuff you have to use to get gold, lead, silver alumina it is prob maybe to tell us it was not meant to be taken out of the earth. I worked at Alumina and Nickel refineries in Austrlai and the processes are absolutely horrible. Think Aus is pretty good with recycling, but not even a match for the Asian countries, I think they said who recycle something like 90%( or something of their Alumina beverage cans) We have our yellow lid wheelie bins for recycling that gets collected every 2 weeks - does SA have domestic recycling going on? Cant remember ther being any when we were still there.


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## Daxk (Jan 20, 2008)

the World is actually very small.
I dis-invested when I realised I was dealing with closed minds at the time.
AFIK no one who worked at the actual processing plant survives, yes, they had safety equipment but I figured it was ineffective.
Aluminium recovery from cans is 100 % its the one product if you use a ton of Al and recycle a ton of cans you end up with a ton.


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## ROKZY (Feb 25, 2009)

Here is something about glass bins located around the city

The Glass Recycling Company


pay it forward; it's a small world after all. 

~R


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## ROKZY (Feb 25, 2009)

thanks for the green website Americano. It's good to see this info.

I am still confused on what to do with plastics.... Daxk, do I stack them up neatly and let the entraprenural Saffricaners pick through it?


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## Daxk (Jan 20, 2008)

There are a couple of poly companies around, the ideal sceanrio is they get ground up and black refuse bags get made of the granules, talk to the plastics guys at CSIR 
plastics here get granulated and reused.


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