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| Hermann Erdmann |
“I HAVE a thousand tyres waiting for collection — when will Redisa
come to fetch them?”
This is the first question the CEO of the Recycling and Economic
Development Initiative of South Africa (Redisa), Hermann Erdmann took during a
recent Redisa report-back session in KwaZulu-Natal.
A former tyre dealer himself, Erdmann explained that due to the
court delays caused by the tyre dealers, Redisa had only officially started in
July 2013 and was now less than a year into its five-year plan, starting with
the appointment of tyre collectors and depot operators in Gauteng, the Western
Cape and KZN.
He said a depot costs between R3 million and R5 million to set up,
and Redisa needed 80 across South Africa.
One of these was to have been at Cato Ridge, but the company owning
the site is not 51% black-owned and Redisa told Witness
Wheels the management team was this week looking for a new site to build
a depot on.
Erdmann said thousands of waste pickers across the country were the
first link in Redisa’s recycling chain and the challenge now was to educate them
not to burn tyres for the 80 cents per kilogram they can get for the steel, but
to sell the tyres to Redisa. “If you are not placing money at the bottom and pay
the garbage collectors, recycling won’t work,” Erdmann told the tyre dealers.
Meanwhile, Redisa is also advertising for black hauliers, or
haulier companies that are 51% black-owned, and based within a 100 km radius of
Redisa’s depots. Erdman said 669 transporters were already registered, but more
was needed to service 853 dealers by the end of 2014.
This is not exactly what the 1 515 dealers who have registered with
Redisa want to hear. Old tyres quickly take up a lot of space, which is why most
tyre dealers are still giving away old tyres to anyone who asks. Erdmann
actually has no problem with this, as long as the tyres will be turned into
something with value or even stacked as retaining walls, instead of being
burned.
He told the KZN dealers that about half of the old passenger car
tyres in South Africa are currently burned both to harvest the steel and
generate heat. This happens especially around industrial cities like eMalahleni
(Witbank), which Erdmann said already had “the most polluted air in the
world”.
Meanwhile, Erdmann admits Redisa will add to this pollution. He
said 70 000 tons of tyres will initially be burned at two cement kilns in the
northern Cape and Mpumalanga, neither of which have scrubbers to remove any of
the heavy metals a burning tyre releases into the air.
He said studies show 15% more respiratory diseases upwind from tyre
burning kilns in Europe. “We don’t want to process tyres this way, but for now,
it is the only plan that works.”
He said Redisa plans to have a crumbing plant in place by 2016.
Redisa is also applying to re-register as a public benefit company instead of a
non-profit organisation, so that mining companies can invest in plants to cut
their giant tyres into one-foot square blocks and claim the money back as
enterprise development. The tyres used in mines comprise 28% of all the tyres in
South Africa.
The other question Erdmann always gets is “where does the
billion-rand a year go?”
He told the dealers the amount Redisa collected in levies actually
amounted to R620 million a year and precisely because Redisa needed to answer this
question, the processing of every cent is audited by three auditing firms —
KPMG, PriceWaterHouseCoopers and Ernst And Young.
Erdmann invited any dealer to visit the head office, where a
pioneering Oracle system shows virtually in real time where tyres are collected
and how Redisa is spending the R2,30 levy per kilogram that it collects on all
new tyres sold. “We have to date spent R300 million with R200 million in
reserve” he said, adding this reserve will be spent by 2017.
Redisa has also committed R50 million over five years in recycling
research, including training of South Africa’s first eight doctorates to pioneer
new ways to recycle tyres at Stellenbosch University.
Erdmann said Redisa was very proud of its process to turn waste
into worth, saying feedback from other recycling groups shows this process is
“changing the way the world see extended producer responsibility”.
Asked what he will do if he does succeed in his personal aim to
work himself out of a job in five years, Erdmann said he plans to use the
process he pioneered at Redisa to manage any of South Africa’s 37 other waste
streams, as SA recycled less than 10% of its waste.
Erdmann invited all tyre dealers to contact Redisa by calling
087 357 3873 or e-mailing info@redisa.org.za.
