Ardagh Glass Packaging-Africa Launches ‘money4glass’ Initiative To Empower Its Glass Recycling Value Chain
Ardagh Glass Packaging-Africa Launches ‘money4glass’ Initiative To Empower Its Glass Recycling Value Chain. Ardagh Glass Packaging–South Africa (AGP) has launched ‘money4glass’, an initiative that uses BanQu’s web-based technology to improve effectiveness within the company’s supply chain for recycled glass (cullet) in South Africa. The BanQu platform will not only help the company to track and monitor all cullet trades which ultimately bring cullet to its own production facilities but will also help to put money in the pockets of the recyclers in a faster, safer, transparent and more efficient way.
“This technology will enable us to identify traders, better understand the footprint of cullet recycling activity in the country and monitor the volumes of cullet traded in the different regions,” explains Thomas Shaw, Supply Chain Executive of Ardagh Glass Packaging–Africa. “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 the informal recyclers who are at the start of the recycling process.”
In 2021, the South African government enacted the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) legislation. EPR is a producer-focused mechanism that aims to reduce waste by ensuring that producers of products take responsibility for the entire lifecycle of their products and packaging. The intention is to increase recycling, thus decreasing dependency on new raw materials, and to ensure the effective and efficient management of end-of-life products.
The BanQu technology will assist AGP–South Africa to collate data that can be used for EPR Plan audits as well as B-BBEE audits while at the same time reducing the ever-present risk of fraud, driving both recycling and transformation in the glass recycling industry.
The easy-to-use platform is accessible on any internet-enabled device and records transparent transactions between registered buyers and sellers at all levels. Besides creating a formalised and transparent trading platform, the technology has several benefits for traders, for the business and for the government’s economic empowerment ambitions.
