Plastic is relatively light in weight compared with glass, for instance. So you need a lot of it to make up the right volume. Government recently began a drive to bring out regulations to clean up the countryside. Disposable supermarket packets were the first in line for a proposed future ban by Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Valli Moosa. In all likelihood, liquor bottles are next, he warned last month.
Beverage cans are no longer a blight on the countryside, though.
Driving the recycling of steel beverage cans are Collect-aCan's founder members, Iscor, Nampak and Crown Cork. National Recycling Forum chairman Ray Lombard says recycling is definitely profitable. People make money out of it. There are more than 35000 people informally employed in steel can collection and many more in the collection of paper waste. There is, for instance, still no recycling of PET plastic bottles for soft drinks.