How does one of the cleanest countries on the African continent keep its reputation of purity? Well for one you need a team of motivated recyclers ensuring that everything that can be, is recycled. According to the Recycle Forum Namibia (RNF), with our 2.1 million people in Namibia and our 3000 tons of waste daily we need to dispose of our waste in ways that don’t contaminate the environment. Waste has a huge negative impact on the natural environment. A human concept considering that in nature waste hardly exists as waste products created by a natural process or organism quickly become the raw products used by other processes and organisms. This is why if we are to live in balance with nature we need to ensure that we don’t contaminate our environment through the by-products of waste. This is where recycling plays a big part in the solution.
As a private-public sector partnership, the Recycle Namibia Forum is aimed at promoting the 3Rs, namely recycle, reuse and reduce. Companies such as the City of Windhoek, Rent-A-Drum, Plastic Packaging, Namibia Breweries, and Document Warehouse etc. are taking the lead in encouraging recycling. The RNF says that for example, in 2014, Plastic Packaging recycled over 1600 tons of plastic and Document Warehouse recycled almost 5 million pages.
Another major success of the Recycle Namibia Forum is their schools project now in its 6th year. As Anita Witt of the RNF explains, a lifetime of awareness of the importance of recycling starts at a young age and has the potential to extend this awareness as children take their learning home”
As Anita explains there are many successes that the RNF has had to date, she personally feels that the fact that almost every single shopping market in Namibia is currently using recycled plastic shopping bags is a great success.
Considering we live in a desert country where water is scare, not all waste products can be recycled within the borders of our country and some waste products need to be sent to South Africa to be recycled. However we have a fully functional plastic recycling plant here that is ensuring our plastic bags are recycled to create the next generation of plastic.
The Recycle Namibia Forum was established as a non-profit membership organisation in 2011. Companies are invited to join the RNF as a member and assist in keeping Namibia clean for generations to come.
You can get in touch with the RNF here : Recycle Namibia Forum