Home 5 Event 5 GreenCape Hosts 13th WISP Workshop with City of Cape Town

GreenCape Hosts 13th WISP Workshop with City of Cape Town

23 September 2019

GreenCape’s Western Cape Industrial Symbiosis Programme (WISP) hosted its 13th Business Opportunities Workshop on 18 September at the Atlantic Beach Country Club, Melkbosstrand. The free workshop was presented in partnership with the City of Cape of Town.

 

WISP is a free service that connects companies so that they can identify and realise the business opportunities enabled by exchanging unused or residual resources (waste materials, energy, water, assets, logistics, expertise) with other companies.

 

“Our workshops are an interactive platform that allows companies to exchange and share under-utilised material, mostly by-products and waste materials, through the application of Industrial Symbiosis,” said Emmanuel Kasese, WISP programme manager at GreenCape. “One company’s waste can be used by another as a resource,” he added.

 

The City of Cape Town Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Opportunities and Asset Management Alderman James Vos, who is responsible for promoting the economic agenda of the City, has lauded WISP for the impact it has had on the City’s economy. Alderman Vos stated that the City of Cape Town is a proud partner of GreenCape since 2015. “We are positioning Cape Town as a green economy hub in Africa by supporting and promoting initiatives such as the Special Economic Zone in Atlantis as well as WISP,” he added.

 

He further stated that the work undertaken by GreenCape has a positive impact on the City’s economy in terms of job creation, economic development and environmental conservation. The financial support from the City has resulted in significant gains for all stakeholders which includes waste diversion, cost savings, job creation as well as valuable linkages and connections between companies.

 

Forty companies participated in the workshop. “Two-hundred-and-sixteen resources were identified and three-hundred-and-ninety-eight potential matches were made. The WISP team will be following up on these potential synergies and lending support to the businesses so that some of the synergies can be realised’ said Kasese.

 

Through facilitated industrial symbiosis, the WISP programme has managed to divert over 80 000 tonnes of waste from going to landfill and an estimated fossil GHG savings of 212,000 tonnes CO2e (Worth ~R82 million at the current carbon spot price, a carbon equivalent of ~57 000 household’s annual electricity consumption in South Africa). Cumulatively, the financial benefits to WISP members are R75 million (additional revenue of R46 million, cost savings of R29 million and private investment of R10 million).