According to the group’s spokesperson, Thomas Jaridheni, the recycling project provides a way to produce a saleable product and at the same time promote management of bottles dumped after use, which are a hazard to humans, especially children, and detrimental to the environment.
The recycling process, demonstrated for The Zimbabwean, involves collecting used bottles, cutting, smoothing, washing and packaging them as recycled, saleable glass products.
The process
Waist belts, rubber bands, fibre, sandpaper, pit sand and mealie cobs are used in the process. “We first tie rubber bands tightly round a used bottle to mark where we want to cut it. The rubber band acts as an insulator to stop the heat from permeating down to the part which we want to use. “After that we tie fibre onto a belt and to another point before we tie it around the bottle at the place we want to cut the bottle. We then slide the bottle up and down the tied fibre to create friction, which generates heat that breaks the bottle in two,” said Jaridheni.
“After this, we smooth the cut edges of the bottom half of the bottle to make it into a drinking glass. Using a bucket of water and pit sand, we erase any written markings on the bottles, and after thoroughly cleaning the glasses, we package them ready for selling,” explained Jaridheni. The top part of the cut off bottles are sold to builders who use them to make Durawalls.
Attractive glasses
The group collects beer, wine and brandy bottles in different shapes, colours and sizes to make attractive glasses.
The project is the brainchild of Luxon Tanyanyiwa, the founding member of the enterprise. He said the response from the market had been very favourable. Their biggest customers are bars, beer-halls and nightclubs, but they also sell to shops and individuals. He said they sell the glasses in singles and packages of six with prices ranging from $1 to $6. Sales average between 300 to 400 glasses per month.
“The money is shared among all seven members of the group. We are all able to support our families from the profits we are making from this venture, which is most satisfying,” he said.
Shortcomings
However, like all ventures, Tanja Glasses is facing its fair share of challenges. The glass recycling venture is in short supply of fibre, which has to be collected from as far as Bocha. Often, they are forced to use less durable alternatives to break the bottles.
Spokesperson Jaridheni thanked the NGO Mercy Corps and the Environmental Management Agency for opening doors to enable them to get their project off the ground. However, he pointed out that the venture has a need to acquire proper equipment and a place to work from as they are currently operating from a back yard. “I think you can see that these tools we are using in our trade – worn out rubber bands, mealie-cobs and so on – are not wholly efficient.
“We are in desperate need of better equipment. I believe this venture has the potential to turn around the country’s entire glass industry if we could persuade investors to help us by providing more efficient tools, enabling us to increase our productivity. We want to grow from just being a back yard venture into a fully profit oriented business. We also need more appropriate premises to operate from and we appeal to council to allocate us a site so we can establish a small factory,” said Jaridheni.
Other ventures
Tanja Glasses has also diversified into fruit tree production and pruning. The group specialises in a wide range of exotic and indigenous fruit trees. Group members have run several tests on various fruit trees and successfully proved that certain trees can produce their fruits through-out the year.
“We have been experimenting with different trees and our findings are that some trees can be made to produce seasonal fruits more than once during the course of a year. What we do is simply cut off branches, causing the trees to grow new shoots, which triggers them to produce another crop of fruits. We either sell these trees to growers or offer our services to prune people’s established fruit trees on their plots of land or their farms,” said Jaridheni.
Post published in: News