Maak ’n plan with plastic

Things that can be recycled from plastic cooldrink bottle include “goody” containers on sale at the KZNSA Art Gallery. Picture: Duncan Guy

Things that can be recycled from plastic cooldrink bottle include “goody” containers on sale at the KZNSA Art Gallery. Picture: Duncan Guy

Published Aug 13, 2022

Share

Those ubiquitous cooldrink bottles.

They flow down rivers, land up on beaches, litter the byways and highways.

After the floods, active citizens collected them in their thousands to hand in for recycling.

Heavy machinery joined the efforts and cleared other debris off the beach.

Sadly, plastic waste other than recyclable PET bottles were not considered to be part of the pickings and much of it ends up in the ocean.

Cooldrink bottles and their lids can be used for a host of things without having to head to a landfill in a DSW bag; or to be melted down and made into a park bench such as those on the grounds of St Henry’s Marist School in Glenwood.

Lettuce sprouts in containers made from recycled cooldrink bottles, attached to a water tank through a cotton wick to provide constant moisture. Picture: Duncan Guy

Also in Glenwood, at the KZN SA Art Gallery, one can buy beautifully painted “goody” containers made from the bases of cooldrink bottles with flaps made from the parts of the bottle immediately above the base, to open and close the container.

A YouTube video doing the rounds showed a Japanese way of growing vegetables by planting them in a holder made completely from a cooldrink bottle. The bottom half serves as a water container. The top, cone-shaped half is filled with soil, then placed in nose-dive position into the water with the lid on. A piece of cotton placed in the water travels through a hole in the bottle top, to the soil, providing automatic irrigation.

We talk about making passive money. The video sold this as a way of producing passive food growing and gave a demonstration of a lettuce that could be harvested in a matter of weeks.

Put to the test in Durban, a lettuce grown this way by a friend has not made such efficient progress but it’s getting there.

When I wanted to embark on practising this cooldrink bottle approach to gardening, with a hurricane lantern-type wick, I headed for the beachfront. Too late, though. There was plenty of litter, plenty of plastic that would pollute the ocean. But not a cooldrink bottle in sight.

Then along came a man with a transparent plastic bag full of them.

“I’m handing them in for recycling,” he said.

I later learned that since the government imposed a ban on the export of scrap metal last month, PET bottles had become more valuable to such waste pickers: the folks who drag trolleys around, filled with cardboard, tin and plastic and sift through bins.

Not dressed up like Gerald as they do their uncomfortable work.

I met Gerald while walking to the shop. Dressed in a neat jacket under which was a collared shirt, he looked anxious and begged me to hear his story, which was how desperate he was for work.

“I have a girlfriend and two small children to support,” he said, opening a neat file full of documents. A diploma certificate, a reference from a stint in the SA National Defence Force.

Any help to add to the packet of groceries a benevolent woman had given him, he pleaded? In the next breath he gave his very critical opinion of the politics that had brought about high unemployment.

We discussed entrepreneurship.

“But I would need capital,” he said.

Yes, he would.

“I suppose I could start out selling something small.”

The few coins that I had in my pocket wouldn’t have helped him much. We went our respective ways, me hoping something I said may have, at least, lifted Gerald’s spirits.

He was out of sight when I heard a scraping on the tarmac beside me.

A garbage picker with a trolley loaded with plastic bags full of plastic cooldrink bottles and, underneath, tin cans.

“How much will you get for all this?” I asked.

“R90.”

“And when did you start collecting all this?”

“Oh, this morning.”

I had been on my way to the shops to buy something for lunch, so perhaps there was more time in the rest of the day to make a few more “bob”. Maybe double the morning’s collection?

I was reminded of a meme that frequently crosses my screen on Facebook, showing two blokes, Adam and Chris.

Adam is in a library. He’s introduced as having “a Bachelors degree in Philosophy; 100k student debt; can’t find a philosophy job; believed people without degrees are stupid”.

Then Chris, working with some wires in an electricity box.

“Four-year paid apprenticeship; no student debt; disconnected Adam’s electricity.”

“Status” is a strange thing. It can get in the way of survival.

The Independent on Saturday

Related Topics:

environmentDurban