The Kruger National Park in partnership with paper and packaging company Nampak on Friday launched its waste separation and recycling facility in Skakuza, in the southern region of the park.

The more than R7-million facility, funded by Nampak, the Kruger National Park Honorary Rangers and other parties, would assist the park in being more environment friendly, while also providing Nampak with additional raw materials to use in its manufacturing processes.

“We have for the last 100 years been trying all possible ways to manage our waste and today we can proudly say that we are making excellent progress,” Kruger National Park acting managing executive Danie Pienaar said at the launch of the facility.

Nampak first started working with Kruger National Park in 2006, with regard to waste disposal by supplying animal-proof bins for the park's rest camps. To date, a total of 400 bins had been installed in southern area rest camps.

The material collected from these bins then had to be processed, which created the need for the waste materials recovery facility (WMRF).

At the newly launched WMRF, materials collected within the park would be separated after which they would be taken back to Nampak’s manufacturing facilities to be used in its manufacturing processes, Nampak executive director Fezekile Tshiqi explained.

The WMRF was a closed-loop system that allowed upright positioning of processors to separate different waste materials on a conveyor belt, which increased productivity and efficiency. Baboon-proof storage cages had also been installed at the facility.

Nampak contributed R4-million to the WMRF, of which R800 000 was spent on a truck enabling the transfer of post-consumer packaging waste from the camps to the facility for sorting.

Tshiqi added that Nampak was also looking to convert the facility into a job creation opportunity.

“There are already 27 people working here and as the volumes increase there is a bigger chance of more jobs [being] created and we hope to double the amount of people working here,” he told Engineering News Online.

Meanwhile, in future, the Kruger National Park would also look to phase out its incinerators in favour of digestive and/or gasification plants that would reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and make the park’s waste recovery system more green, Pienaar added.

Future plans for the Kruger National Park-Nampak partnership included establishing a similar facility in the northern part of the park once the Skukuza facility was up and running, Tshiqi said.

“We will need continued support as we plan to roll out these facilities through the rest of the Kruger National Park,” Pienaar said, adding that the launch of the WMRF was only the beginning of the park’s waste-management journey.