MEMBER NEWS
Technology boost for SA’s recycling sector
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n a move set to revolutionise how recyclable materials are traded, tracked and traced in South Africa, an innovative technology called BanQu is being rolled out to recycling buy-back centres across the country. The digital platform will help buy-back centres accurately record and track their recycling transactions with waste pickers – as well as trace the origins of the recycling – while providing a real-time business management tool enabling them to better understand and manage their businesses. South Africa’s PET plastic producer responsibility organisation (PRO), PETCO, is driving the rollout of the BanQu technology in a project called Up that commenced in 2021 and is funded by The Coca-Cola Foundation. Over the next year, the system will be rolled out to 100 buy-back centres identified by PETCO across the country, with 10 centres in Gauteng, Limpopo, the
Western Cape and Eastern Cape that are already live and transacting on the system. Once registered on the BanQu system, the buy-back centres can capture the quantity of recyclable material bought from waste pickers as well as the price paid for it and where it was collected. This allows buy-back centres to know the quantity of all materials within their centres at any given time. The waste pickers, in turn, receive an SMS receipt for each transaction and can keep track digitally of their income earned through sales to various buy-back centres. To date, the 10 live centres have registered over 1 400 waste pickers on the BanQu system and more than 2 350tons of recyclable
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