INDUSTRIAL SYMBIOSIS

In just nine months, Reroute Waste diverted 39 t of waste from landfill, reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 1 158 t and created four permanent jobs through recycling waste from Ekhaya Junction – Citiq Student Residence at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT).

he success of Reroute Waste,

Tformally known as Authentic 100, is based on an innovative materials recovery facility (MRF) model, which offers various solutions to the waste management sector. An MRF is a specialised plant that receives waste, separates it according to type, and prepares the recyclable material for distribution to end-user manufacturers. Nonrecyclable material is disposed of safely in landfill sites or certified disposal facilities.

The recyclable materials that the company has identified at the student residence are organic waste, plastics, metals, aluminium cans, glass, paper and cardboards).

Bafana Mkhawane and Fortune Hadebe established Reroute Waste in 2017. The founders learnt of the waste management challenges at their student residence during their stay – while completing their National Diploma in Entrepreneurship.

The residence comprised of 2 301 beds, which accommodated TUT students from the Pretoria West and Ga-Rankuwa campuses, with notable waste producers being the students, property garden waste, and two cafeterias within the residence. All the waste was disposed of in two 6 t skip bins, three times a week. Waste disposal filled the skips to capacity on each occasion and, in an event where collection was skipped, the waste posed serious environmental and health hazard for the students. Seeing this as an opportunity to clean up the student environment, Mkhawane and Hadebe – with the support of the National Cleaner Production Centre South Africa (NCPC-SA) – compiled a proposal for the university residence, which included a waste evaluation study to understand the type of waste generated, the volumes, and how to go about recycling it.

Once the proposal was approved, Reroute Waste then set up its project in July 2019, which helped control the waste outside the dumping site and facilitated the separation of recyclable and non-recyclable material.

The project was so successful that, four months after inception, Reroute Waste was appointed to manage all waste activities for Ekhaya Junction effective from 1 January 2020. The amount of waste being disposed of also dropped 50%.

For more information on this or other industrial symbiosis case studies, visit www.ncpc.co.za.