Trash Thread Textile in conjunction with Coca-Cola Beverages Africa and PETCO have launched an innovation challenge that aims to provide innovative solutions to bale post-consumer PET plastic in order to ease their transportation for recycling and manufacturing.
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The competition dubbed Beyond Baling Innovation Challenge (BBIC) will target University students, Small and Medium Enterprises and the JuaKali sector to come up with solutions of baling PET plastic so as to properly manage them.
“The Coca-Cola Company and its bottlers are leading the industry with a bold, ambitious goal: to help collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell by 2030. We’re reimagining our packaging to make it better for our planet and our business. We’re working to build better bottles because packaging shouldn’t harm our world.” said Daryl Wilson, Managing Director of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa in Kenya.
“We’re also partnering with communities and industry to lead the drive for a World Without Waste. This is where our BBIC programme is key – we’re working to bring people together to help us collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one we sell. Regardless of where it comes from, we want every package to have more than one life.” Mr. Wilson added.
The challenge will identify and award the best innovations to bale post-consumer PET plastic in Manual Baler, Renewable Energy Powered Baler and Grid Powered Baler categories.
“PET plastic is bulky therefore a challenge to transport. Due to this, we need to compress and bale it. Instead of importing balers, we wish to tap into our abundant local resources to innovate local balers and encourage baler manufacturing in Kenya.” Said Gurpreet Kenth – CEO T3 Group.
The competition targets to promote and nurture innovations in Kenya which will enhance commercialization and generation of wealth, employment and youth entrepreneurship which is in line with the Big 4 Agenda.
“That plastic waste and plastic extrusion is a challenge globally today is not in question, that there are opportunities that exist in the management of plastic waste has been contentious. However, the realities across the globe show us that the plastics recycling industry is set to grow to close to 6 billion Kenya shilling industry by 2023,” said Joyce Waweru PETCO Kenya Country Manager.
In line with the national solid waste management strategy and national plastic recycling strategy, the competition seeks to collect and recycle postconsumer PET bottles across the country as it taps into the innovative technical space and establish partnerships for business development, awareness building and support recycling and manufacturing.