2024 CIRCULAR ECONOMY AND WASTE INNOVATION Award Finalists
SPONSORED BY
For a policy, programme, project, product, service or technology that significantly reduces waste volumes and/or facilitates a circular economy through re-use, recycling or upcycling.
Eskom’s Lethabo Power Station - Ash Beneficiation Project
Eskom generates electricity through the burning of coal. In much the same way as you have to clean your Weber after a weekend braai, a power station must manage ash produced from burning coal at a much larger scale. Eskom manages the ash through safe disposal at designated ash disposal facilities. The disposal of ash at these facilities typically requires an area of land in excess of 600 hectares!
As a means of productively using the bottom ash and fly ash as a resource instead of disposing of it as waste, Lethabo Power Station has been contractually supplying ash to large cement producers and the brick-making industry for over 30 years. In the 2022/23 financial year, the power station generated approximately 6021.26 kilotons of ash and managed to recycle 1221.148 kilotons of the produced as through the large cement producers and brick makers throughout the country.
Netcare Limited - My Walk Made With Soul
From disposable hospital drips to a pair of brand-new school shoes.
The Netcare and Adcock Ingram Critical care initiative turns single use PVC drip bags, oxygen masks and associated tubing into brand new school shoes. The MyWalk partnership is an example of embracing a circular economy. It shows how a green solution can fulfill a material need for a business while simultaneously benefiting society, in this case by supporting education, job creation and enterprise development.
Singakwenza Early Childhood Education
Singakwenza, meaning “We can do it!”, is an NPO which focuses on Early Childhood Education. With an emphasis on long-term sustainability, we provide grassroots training for ECD practitioners & parents in poor communities to enable them to provide fun, educational activities for their vulnerable preschool children.
These activities develop, through play, the foundational skills for learning, supported by educational resources that are handmade solely from recycling. Once the adults have been trained to provide daily stimulation for their young children, they are able to make all their own resources using household packaging that usually ends up in landfill, rivers and the ocean.
Singakwenza works to empower these caregivers to create safe, loving and sustainable learning spaces for children and to upskill them with the building blocks that underwrite and facilitate children’s ability to learn through play, know love and develop resilience, to enable them to reach their full potential.