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Case Study: Closing the Loop with HDPE: 50/Fifty Wheelie Bin

28 January 2021

Case Study: Closing the Loop with HDPE: 50/Fifty Wheelie Bin

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GreenCape, in partnership with the City of Cape Town, has published a resilience themed case study showcasing an example of the circular economy in action, as well as the embedding of circular procurement principles within the City of Cape Town’s procurement policy.

A circular economy keeps products, components and materials in the economy at their highest use and value at all times. A circular approach is also useful for ensuring a resilient system. Municipalities, especially metropolitan areas, are large consumers of goods and services. As such they are well placed to drive circularity at scale.

One of the many levers a city can implement to drive circularity at scale is through the concept of circular procurement. Nowhere is this more evident than through the City of Cape Town’s (CCT) 50/Fifty refuse bin procurement programme.

Through its 50/Fifty programme, the CCT metropolitan municipality has leveraged its procurement policy to tangibly facilitate circularity at scale. More specifically, the CCT has used circular procurement to not only meet its constitutional mandate to ensure its citizens have access to waste services, but has diverted waste from its own landfills, secured end-markets for plastic recyclers, secured offtakes to their own bin waste, created circular jobs and more importantly, have secured job and businesses during a global crisis. All this without compromising price, quality, functionality, and longevity.

The case study discusses:

  • Diversion of plastic waste from landfill
  • Procurement as a policy lever to stimulate circularity
  • Local government as a catalyst for circularity at scale
  • Building resilience through circularity
  • Creating value from condemned material

To download the free case study, click here.