From the Pen of the President.....
Dear fellow Rotarians and friends,
Happy Heritage Day, Happy Rosh Hashanah, Happy Monday!! Hope you all celebrated in style and befitting your culture, heritage and religion – if that is your scene!!
I 
this analogy! (it is not new – but worth thinking about)
You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere.
Why did you spill the coffee?
"Because someone bumped into me!!!"
Wrong answer. You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup.
Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea.
*Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out.*
Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which WILL happen), whatever is inside you will come out. It's easy to fake it, until you get rattled.
*So we have to ask ourselves... “what's in my cup?"*
When life gets tough, what spills over?
Joy, gratefulness, peace and humility?
Anger, bitterness, harsh words and reactions?
Life provides the cup, YOU choose how to fill it!
Have a wonderful week.
Ann
Last Friday...
.... we had the opportunity to listen to a very valuable and insightful presentation given to us by the representatives of Urban Surfer, whose long-term goal it is to formalize the "waste picking" industry.
Sifiso Gumbi, who himself started off as a reclaimer imparted some startling facts that few of us are aware of:
* Only 10% of the population recycle.
* 80 - 90% of all recycled waste in South Africa is collected by informal reclaimers.
* Reclaimers collect in excess of 200 kg of recyclable waste and can travel more than 50 km a day.
* There are over 90 000 reclaimers that make a living collecting, sorting and selling recyclable waste.
* Their average earnings a day is +/-R400.
* Each reclaimer diverts up to 24 tons of recyclable waste a year from our landfills.
* Reclaimers save our municipalities hundreds of millions of Rand in landfill space annually, and they offer this service for free.
* Waste recycling is self-sustainable and helps improve the environment.
* Very few of the recyclers are homeless, but live a long distance from where they operate. They need to safe guard their waste and therefore sleep where they sort.
* They have limited resources, hence the majority of reclaimers have only makeshift trolleys and no PPE.
The Urban Surfer Project aims to recognize informal waste reclaimers as active and equal participants in political, economic, social, cultural and environmental processes.
Under the guidance of John Kullmann, who is responsible for design and development and Ivor Allison, head of manufacturing and logistics Urban Surfer received a major boost in November 2021 when Hippo (known for their comparative insurance quotes) came on board as sponsors and are now supporting 50 waste reclaimers with purpose built collection trolleys, collection bags, shelter covers and sleeping bags, PPE and a waste management GPS tracking device, with which vital data on waste collection, sorting and selling is collected. This data is crucial to determine recycling trends.
The total cost to kit out a reclaimer with all the necessary equipment would cost R12 200 and a further R1 650 for the Waste Management GPS tracking device.
Sifisu, who is the Waste Reclaimer relations officer for Urban Surfer, maintains that there is a genuine desire by the reclaimers to transform and uplift their image and that with corporate support this would be achievable. Corporates would be able to take advantage of brand advertising and gain valuable plastic credits.
Plastic credits are measurable, verifiable and transferrable units representing specific quantity of plastic that has been collected from the environment or recycled.
John Ullmann's ambitious vision is that within three years they would be able to onboard 1600 reclaimers and with that 40 000 plastic credits could be generated which would translate into R150 million!!
An ECO Conscious Heritage Day Celebration....
In the heart of bustling Diepsloot lies the God's Will Faith Ministries Church that houses the classrooms for the Khensani's Collection, one of them built entirely from eco-bricks.
Saturday, Heritage Day, was dedicated to showcase and celebrate the progress that has been made in the construction of three additional eco-brick classrooms.
Earthly Touch Foundation (ETF) is a Non-Profit organisation whose main focus is to, contribute to the reduction of global warming through collection of plastic waste and repurposing it into eco-bricks which are then used for construction, making of furniture, and in agriculture. The organisation was registered in 2020 operating out of Gauteng with the main focus in training and education of communities on the impact of plastic pollution and how they can participate in saving their own environment from the impact of plastic pollution. ETF is BBBEE level 1 with its activities aimed at benefiting previously disadvantaged communities through training, skills development and job creation jobs within their own environment.
It was a gloriously sunny and joyous day with school children from the Diepsloot community and learners from St David's Marist Brothers and St Mary's getting their hands dirty by picking up recyclable and non-recyclable waste from the informal landfills around the church grounds, planting avocado trees, making eco-bricks and getting some lessons in the construction process of the eco-brick walls.
It takes 16 000 ecobricks to build one classroom, and if you do the maths, if one ecobrick weighs 500 grams, it means that 8000 tons of non-recyclable waste has been repurposed and has not gone to the landfills or ended up polluting our rivers.
Further innovative recycling endeavours showcased that day were school shoes manufactured from repurposed hospital drip bags.
Eco-bricks - a truly remarkable initiative that we can whole-heartedly throw our weight behind!!
Congratulations Rosebank....
.....for being awarded a well-deserved Citation by Rotary International.
Grateful Receivers of Blankets....
30 blankets were distributed to waste reclaimers by Pastor Ndaba at the Rosebank Union Church and on behalf of them would like to extend their appreciation.
s been tracking 50 waste reclaimers since November 2021 as they covered more than 14,000km – on foot! – within just four months.
No Meeting this Friday.....
...instead an afternoon of fellowship hosted by Sybille on Saturday 1st of October.
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