NEWS ROUND-UP
SUSTAINABILITY NEWS FROM AROUND THE WORLD Coca-Cola launches new sustainability platform in Africa The Coca-Cola Africa Operating Unit and its bottling partners recently announced the launch of JAMII, the new Africa-focused sustainability platform. The platform will house the company’s existing and new sustainability initiatives. Through this signature platform, CocaCola hopes to attract like-minded partners to help accelerate the on-the-ground impact of its initiatives. The new platform will build and expand on the past accomplishments in three areas: water stewardship, the economic empowerment of women and youth, and waste management.
Manufacturers need to redesign their ‘circular’ economy With 45% of global greenhouse gas emissions coming from the way we make and use products, local business needs to start looking at how it contributes. The South African government has been implementing the appropriate changes, through the implementation of an updated National Waste Management Strategy. It outlines government policy and strategic interventions for the waste sector and is aligned and responsive to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. “Over the last year or so, we have seen a small increase in big manufacturing businesses wanting to improve their environmental footprint and reduce the amount of waste they send to landfill, but not enough has happened yet,” says Justice Tootla, managing director of waste management company Averda. Tootla asserts that for this to be achieved, business will need to partner with experts in waste to help develop a comprehensive, end-to-end waste management programme that will help drive a circular economy. “We all want to see a South Africa with zero waste-to-landfill, cleaner and safer communities, the financially viable and stable management of waste, and to allow for our natural systems to regenerate for future generations,” concludes Tootla.
In the area of women and youth economic empowerment, JAMII will promote and stimulate entrepreneurship opportunities through the provision of improved access to skills training, networks, finance and markets. In the area of water stewardship, they will replenish 100% of the water used in the production of their products by managing water-use efficiency in their operations. For waste management, nearly all of Coca-Cola’s packaging is already recyclable, with the goal of recycling the equivalent of 100% of its packaging waste by 2030.
PPE recycled and converted to energy
A French start-up company called Plaxtil has come up with a solution to convert medical waste such as Covid-19 facial masks into energy. How the process works: • The masks are collected and placed in quarantine for four days. • After this period, they are ground into small pieces. • The small pieces are then put through ultraviolet light, which ensures that they are completely decontaminated before the recycling process begins. “We take fabrics, masks. We collect them, we grind them, mix them with binding material and we transform them into material that we call Plaxtil, which can be used in the industry and moulded like normal plastic,” says Olivier Civil, co-founder of Plaxtil. The masks can then be recycled into a number of objects; however, they are currently being turned into objects that will assist in fighting Covid-19, such as face shields.
