The same discarded tyre that “people burn and destroy the road with while protesting against service delivery” could change their lives and bring them lots of money.
This was a call made by Mbhashe Local Municipality mayor Dr Samkelo Janda during the launch of the council’s waste recycling campaign in Elliotdale on Thursday.
The initiative is aimed at teaching sustainable waste management and promoting recycling.
Janda told recyclers and people from the surrounding rural communities that things usually seen as expired and thrown away could be converted into beautiful art and other amazing products.
“My wish, even when I am no longer here, is to see a factory in Mbhashe that changes [used and discarded] plastics into something else.
“I am not talking about them being collected and taken to Cape Town or discarded cardboard boxes being collected and sent to Durban for recycling,” he said.
“Do you know that seats are sometimes made from old tyres?
“I want items to be collected and sent to a factory here to make dustbins or plastics being transformed into extremely beautiful products.
“This is our way to try to reopen those closed factories that provided jobs back in the day.”
Janda said he once attended a tourism indaba in Durban where he was offered a beautiful chair to sit on, only to realise later that the same seat had been crafted from a discarded car tyre.
“We are trying to develop what is referred to as a circular economy now which says whatever you think is old, expired and no longer has value, is turned into a product that can generate money.”
He said companies had shown interest in partnering with the municipality on recycling and waste management.
Among those were investors from France who met municipal authorities over the Easter Week.
The French investors had shown an interest in coming to Mbhashe to see what industries could be established through waste management, he said.
This would also help protect the environment and ecosystem.
“Some of our natural resources get depleted but the bottles, you can collect them and create beautiful artwork.
“I wish to see a factory that takes old tyres and produces ink or diesel from them,” Janda said.
“We will give you training if you want to become a recycler.
“There are stages, including those that collect the waste to those that help sort it out and those that recycle.
“Our biggest thing is that you must be trained in quality so that the products you create from the plastic like imibhaco and hats can be SA National Bureau of Standards approved.”
The municipality was running an enterprise development programme in which it helped SMMEs source funding.
The mayor said their goal was to become a leader in the Eastern Cape in waste management.
Elliotdale resident Nonikelo Rhoni said when she and other women in the area had started collecting discarded steel and selling it in Durban, they had become a laughing stock and butt of jokes in their communities.
They also would spend several nights on the side of the road while battling to get transport to ferry their collected waste material all the way to KwaZulu-Natal.
“We started in 2017 and it was a struggle until the municipality intervened and assisted us.
“We managed to send our children to school. Some of us have children now in college and university through recycling,” she said.
At the 2025 provincial World Environmental Day celebrations in Mbhashe, economic development, environmental affairs and tourism MEC Nonkqubela Pieters urged women to play a leading role in fighting pollution in their communities.
“If we want a clean province it is up to us women to take charge,” she said.
“Women make up about 52.7% of the population in our province.
“It means women are in the majority. Men tend to follow, but women must take the lead in the fight against pollution.”
Daily Dispatch
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