Case study “PetrecoZim & ZimPhos”

The SIRDC team in Zimbabwe will focus on 2 companies. The first is PetrecoZim51, an initiative that was started by major companies within the beverage and allied industries in Zimbabwe to address environmental pollution related to PET bottles. The disposal of post-consumer polyethylene terephthalate (PCPET) bottles had become a huge problem in the country due to lack of any visible recovery and recycling effort.

PetrecoZim has however made significant strides as far as CE is concerned but still has challenges to scale up its activities. The corrent estimates show that the country is importing and discharging approximately 15,000 tonnes of PET into the environment per year and the volume is growing.

The SIRDC team will analyse the challenges faced by PetrecoZim as one of the success stories so far in Zimbabwe and will also explore opportunities from lessons that will be learnt from other similar industries in the developed world. SIRDC will also analyse the challenges faced by other local companies in developing networks of recycling centres for critical raw materials.

The cases will characterise local SMEs at very low TRL levels and civic society organisations, evaluating corrent and potential progress towards circular production patterns. The policies, technologies, models and the anticipated socio-economic gains will be reviewed as enablers or disablers of progress towards CE practices.

Gender issues will importantly be taken into account especially at the low levels of the recycling value chain including but not limited to waste pickers and sorters. The second company is ZimPhos, the country’s sole producer of phosphate fertilizers, aluminium sulphate for municipal water treatment, sulphuric acid and other industrial chemicals. It operates a large factory complex at Msasa in Harare where phosphatic fertilizers are produced using phosphate rock supplied from Dorowa Mine.

SIRDC-ZNCPC will analyse and present how Zimphos has managed to make a successful symbiosis with the construction company St Gobain. The case of ZimPhos and St Gobain is one form of a model of “brokering” to bring companies together in innovative collaborations, finding ways to use the waste from one as raw material for another – a case at high or better/improved TRL levels. Local or wider cooperation in industrial symbiosis can reduce the need for virgin raw material and waste disposal, thereby closing the material loop – a fundamental feature of circular economy and a driver for green growth and eco-innovative solutions.