As part of it’s Government to Government programme with RVO, RWS Environment asked WASTE to analyse and present case studies showing involvement of the informal sector waste collection and recycling generated from packaging.
One of the activities under this programme in Columbia involved the support of the National Business Association of Colombia (ANDI) who represent private sector interests and has more than 110 business members from different sectors of industry. ANDI expressed its wish to organise a workshop about waste policies regarding packaging materials on April 9, 2014 in Bogota and included a part in the programme about integrating the informal sector. Case studies from South Africa and Ecuador were selected to be presented during the workshop in Bogota. South Africa was chosen because it has similar characteristics to Colombia and a well developed recycling industry without support of government policies. Furthermore, South Africa has a large community of waste pickers. Ecuador was chosen because it had recently implemented a deposit fee on used bottles resulting in very high collection rates of PET bottles.
Various stakeholders in the (PET bottle) recycling chain were visited and interviewed across the countries represented. Stakeholders included: waste pickers, sorting centres, recycling industry and government. Although the original case study from South Africa looked at the whole recycling sector, this report focuses on one packaging material only: PET bottles.
To find out more about this research you can reach out to our Senior Solid and Plastic Waste Management Expert, Sophie van den Berg on: [email protected]
