Ardagh Glass Packaging (AGP) - South Africa has announced the launch of a new ‘money4glass’ initiative to empower its glass recycling value chain in the region.
money4glass leverages traceability via solution provider BanQu’s web-based technology that can help improve AGP's supply chain.
Using BanQu’s platform, AGP can track and monitor all of its traded cullet, which eventually will end up in manufacturing facilities.
This can facilitate safer, more transparent, and faster transactions between registered buyers and sellers at all levels, using any internet-enabled device.
Traders involved in the effort can use the platform for maintaining electronic records and bookkeeping to replace manual systems.
AGP-Africa's supply chain executive Thomas Shaw said: “This technology will enable us to identify traders, better understand the footprint of cullet recycling activity in the country and monitor volumes of cullet traded in different regions.
“Importantly, it will also allow us to make glass recycling financially viable across the width and breadth of the country through the application of targeted incentives and to ensure that payments and incentives can quickly and efficiently reach all recyclers, but particularly informal recyclers who are at the start of the recycling process.”
AGP’s supply chain has three levels of recyclers, Level 1, 2, and 3, who are paid incentives and subsidies (only certain qualifying recyclers) to support glass recycling efforts across South Africa.
First-level glass recyclers are registered on the company’s database and are responsible for selling at least 10 tonnes of glass every month, directly to AGP.
Level 2 glass recyclers sell to Level 1 buyers in comparatively smaller quantities while the third-level recyclers are informal traders or mainly waste pickers who sell their collected waste glass in bags/trolleys and then sell it to Level 1 or 2 buyers.
The main objective of this initiative, AGP said, is to boost glass recycling and minimise dependency on raw materials to ensure better management of end-of-life products and packaging.
It is also in line with the South African government’s extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation enacted in 2021.
