Reduce, reuse, Regenize

Recycling has been around for thousands of years. But fast forward to 2016 and Chad Robertson and Nkazi Miti from Regenize thought up a modern approach to recycling through smartphones and voucher systems for creating incentives in the Western Cape. We spoke to Chad.

Why was Regenize created & who founded it?

Regenize was founded in 2016 by myself and my co-founder, Nkazi Miti. It started out as a 3D printing project actually. So, initially, we wanted to make 3D printing products from plastic waste, so it’s a very long history from where we are today. But at the beginning, it was about how we could reduce plastic waste in the environment and as we evolved it became more about, not just plastic waste, but how we could get citizens involved in recycling. This is because at the time when we started only 3.5% of South Africans recycled. So it was about using our skillsets from a software background to try and get people to recycle through various methods. As the company evolved we moved into different things but those were the main reasons why we started.

Can you tell us about the process of using Regenize to collect recyclables?

We have two different services – a free service and a paid service. For the paid service you simply go to our website and enter your address, which will determine whether or not you fall within our collection areas or not or whether you fall within a paid area or a free area. From there you select which service you want, for example, a weekly or fortnightly service. And then if you want extra things like recycling bins and posters, that’s all on our website. Once the order is confirmed it is reviewed by our operations team and then, based on where you reside we will inform you of your collection day and time. We will also send through educational material ahead of that and the day before your collection we will send you a reminder. All you need to do is place your mixed recyclables in one bag, so we allow single-stream recycling, and then our team will collect and weigh the recyclables. From the truck, the recyclables go to the various partners we work with and they will sort it.

On the free side, it is slightly different. You can sign up on our website or through sales reps. They also get educational materials and bins, but they have a different team which would have a decentralised hub (a micro-warehouse) in the communities where we work with the local waste pickers from that area. So, those waste pickers are equipped with tricycles, trolleys, PPE, mobile devices and training. On collection day the waste picker will use a trolley or tricycle to perform the collection and take the recyclables back to the hub and sort the materials there. Our team will then go to the hub and collect the materials from them, to be processed at a plant.

What process is followed after fetching the recyclables?

On the free side, the teams sort it at the decentralised hubs, so essentially, it is about sorting it into the various streams, so with plastics, you can have PET, HDPE, PP and all the different variants, same with paper, glass and metals, everything is sorted accordingly and then the stuff we can’t sort joins the things that won’t be recycled. It’s a very simple process. The teams are trained on the process and they sort everything out into different bulk bags. Once it’s sorted, our driver will collect those materials. We will then sell it to different partners and from there it goes onto different lines, eventually becoming new materials. So, our focus is primarily on the collection side, we don’t really focus on the processing of the materials which is like turning a plastic bag into plastic flakes or chips. That’s the responsibility of the other partners in the value chain and from there they will sell it to manufacturers who will produce new materials from it.

What kind of items can be collected by Regenize?

We are open to all dry recyclables that are economically recyclable in Cape Town. You know, sometimes you have material that is recyclable but at the moment it might not be economically recyclable. A good example would be your milk cartons – at one stage it was economically viable to recycle these items but today it is not. Polystyrene is also one of these products that are not always economically viable to recycle. This is tricky because it could happen for a month or two and then next month it’s viable again, so it’s difficult to communicate that with customers because we don’t want to make the process confusing for them.

But the general stuff we recycle would be your HDPE, glass, metals, aluminium, steel, tins and cooldrink cans. And then we do most types of paper – white, brown, frozen food cartons, and cardboard. PET is also tricky because you have your bottles which are recyclable but then you have your PET fruit punnets which are not recyclable locally. Although it can be recycled, we don’t have the machinery to recycle it. It can be tricky for us in the industry so I can imagine how it feels for residents at times.

Tell us about the voucher and rewards programme.

That’s Remali and it’s a virtual currency we have that users earn when they recycle with us – much like a rewards card system. This is actually what we developed initially and it was the driving force at the beginning of our journey.

Each time users recycle they earn Remali. Next, we want to incentivise various sustainable behaviours, not just recycling. Once users earn Remali they can spend it in two ways – online and offline. On our website, they can exchange Remali points for various vouchers like airtime and data, grocery vouchers or even recycling bags that they can also donate to the waste pickers that work through our free model. Offline, there is a programme we created called Simplify Remali which enables residents in low-income areas with free service to use their Remali vouchers at spaza shops. So, we work with the local spaza shops and give residents QR codes they can use there.

Where does Regenize operate and how many people use this service?

Again, there are two models. Paid and free. The free model or the decentralised locations are based primarily in low-income communities, specifically where people don’t generally recycle. There is one in Bridgetown, in Athlone. There is one in Kewtown, which isn’t too far from there. There is one in a place called Tambo Village and Hanover Park and quite a few more coming up now.

On the paid side we focus on suburbs in Cape Town, ranging from Bellville all the way downtown, on the north side. Then on the south side, we go all the way from town to Rondebosch and Wynberg and everywhere in between we also collect.

Our paid model has about 300 customers, that range from households to apartments to offices and in the free models, it’s continuously expanding. At the moment we are close to 4,000 free customers right now.

What does this service cost?

For the fortnightly service, it is R65 per month excluding VAT and then R99 per month for the weekly service, excluding VAT, that’s for households and singular apartments. If it’s an apartment block then the charges are a bit different. It’s all about making recycling as easy as having a Spotify account. That’s what we try to work towards, making it easy and simple because a lot of the recycling services can be very complicated if there is a whole payment process involved.

Why are services like this important in SA?

It is building solutions for our context locally, it’s not simply following the normal practises of how recycling is and has been done for quite a few years. We are looking at the whole picture and not just looking at it as a traditional recycling company. That’s the only way we are going to increase the amount of people recycling. It’s also important to make sure we aren’t leveraging people’s difficult circumstances and instead we are helping them, especially those who are already doing a great job, like the waste pickers. We try to work with them to improve their process and retain their dignity.

How much recyclable material have you collected to date?

As of August 2022, we have collected around 400 tonnes of recyclables from our members.


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