Thousands of pupils across South Africa have been receiving pencil bags made from post-consumer recycled plastic bottles, and one of them was the Greenwood Park Primary School, in Durban North.
Andre Nel, head of sustainability at Pick n Pay (PnP), said that apart from giving schools annual curriculum-aligned supporting materials aimed at both educators and pupils, the Pick n Pay School Club also conceptualises awareness initiatives ranging from hand-hygiene to healthy eating.
“20 000 pupils across 41 primary schools will receive the PnP pencil bag that is made from a 500ml PET recycled plastic bottle. This means that 20,000 PET bottles would have been recycled, and avoided landfill or slipping into the local environment, for this initiative,” said Nel.
He said that the project is driven by the company, a public-private educational platform that provides over two million pupils and their families with free educational resources each year. A growing focus at schools, said Nel, is encouraging positive behaviour towards recycling.
“Plastic packaging is often necessary for food security. We also need to create solutions for post-consumer plastic packaging so that we can minimise its impact on the environment. The industry has created many solutions already. For instance, Pick n Pay makes all its reusable shopping bags from recycled bottles and in the last three years alone, nearly 11 million 500ml plastic bottles have been recycled to make these bags,” he said.
For these solutions to be viable, he said that consumers need to be recycling. “Creating these pencil bags was a visual way to show the pupils how plastic packaging can be repurposed if they recycle. We believe this can help drive good recycling habits from a young age,” he said.
Nel added that they have also partnered with PETCO, SA’s leading PET plastic industry’s Producer Responsibility Organisation to provide posters and workbooks to selected primary schools in the next month to further promote the importance of recycling.
Nel said: “Encouraging recycling habits has been a focus of the Pick n Pay School Club since 2019 and last year we introduced an ‘environmental awareness’ category in the popular ‘School Club Hero Awards’ which celebrates everyday acts of heroism, such as bravery, kindness, and tolerance. The new category aims to promote care for the environment by encouraging pupils to implement the 3 R’s which are Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle, and environmentally focused clubs in schools.”
Dr Ian Africa, principal of Greenwood Park Primary, said that they were grateful to the company for the kind gesture in giving out pencil bags.
“The pupils loved the bags and we are pleased with the partnership that we have with the company over the years. The school has been involved in so many projects with PnP and it has always been a positive journey,” said the principal.
