Page 31 - index

E-wastE casE study

However, through her feisty demeanor,
inquisitiveness and keenness to learn,
Mtshali’s development landed her the
position of outreach director when
WeCare NPC became a company in
2013.

“When I started at SIMS I didn’t even
know how to operate a mouse or a
keyboard. I’d never had a computer
at home and even a cell phone
seemed beyond my reach. In between
completing my studies, I pestered the
production manager and his staff to
teach me about computers. I spent all
my spare time learning about PCs and
laptops,” Mtshali recalls.

Out of sight, out of mind

SIMS RSA country director and WeCare
NPC founder, Allan Werth, says there is
urgent need to come up with sustainable
e-waste recycling models. Werth argues
riding on the back of business-to- WeCare NPC started out as a corporate that the non-business part of e-waste
business (B2B) contracts, private social investment project of SIMS collection and recycling has been found
sector e-waste initiatives have a distinct Recycling Solutions South Africa (SIMS wanting globally. According to him, the
preference for playing in the lucrative RSA), a subsidiary of one of the world’s enormity of the challenges that e-waste
IT and consumer electronics e-waste largest B2B e-waste recycling firms. poses is such that business ought to
space. Their profit-driven nitpicking In fact, the story of Gloria Mtshali, one start looking at the disposal of e-waste
means that they generally stay as far of three directors of WeCare NPC, in an integrated manner, and not only
away as possible from handling white embodies the spirit of the partnership picking on the profitable part, such
goods, such as unwanted fridges and between SIMS RSA and the not-for-profit as B2B IT e-waste. While households
washing machines, even though these company, WeCare NPC. may have a computer or two and some
constitute the biggest portion of e-waste. cell phones, Werth’s conclusion is that
Originally from KwaMaphumulo, a rural the end-user, or the household side of
Not only are the overheads for recycling area of KwaZulu-Natal, Mtshali worked e-waste, is not working.
white goods high, their components as a general helper at SIMS RSA. At
are also comparatively worthless, once the time her job involved just about any Far from being generators of e-waste,
stripped. However, in KwaZulu-Natal, manual work, from tending the company the rural communities within which
a partnership between a multinational garden to making tea for SIMS RSA staff. WeCare NPC operates usually end up
company and a rural community-
based enterprise is turning the e-waste
recycling model on its head.

a tale of two companies

An electronic waste (e-waste) recycling
firm with a global reach may seem at
odds with the environs of the affluent,
coastal town of Ballito, south of Durban.
Odder still, is the idea that Ballito’s
largely poor and semi-rural neighbours
could be the breeding grounds for an
innovative and developmental model
to solve the challenges associated with
e-waste worldwide. Yet, two companies,
one high tech and a product of the digital
world, the other born off the grid of the
global digital network, have formed an
unlikely partnership to pilot a unique
solution to e-waste, while simultaneously
creating jobs and bridging the digital
divide in rural communities.

Volume 11 No. 3 of 2018 | SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW 29