August 28, 2002
By Mandisi Majavu
HAVE a beer at Ubuntu Village. Then take the empty bottle across to the Green Glass store, and have it recycled into an attractive drinking glass - while you wait.
The Green Glass store, located in a South African Breweries stall where beer is on sale, collects customers' empty bottles, washes them, then cuts and shapes them.
A range of attractive glasses made from old beer and wine bottles
When a bottle arrives, it is first washed with "green" water that is continuously recycled from a tank. Then the bottom of the bottle is cut off and the cut edge smoothed to make a brim. The bottle is flipped, and the neck of the bottle glued to the original heavy bottom, with a special glue imported from Europe. Voila! - A drinking glass is produced. The manufacturing process takes less than 15 minutes; and if a buyer wishes, a glass can be customised or engraved.
All sorts of glasses are on offer, from mineral water glasses, beer draught glasses, carafes, vases, you name it; made out from different kinds of bottles. Some are plain, some engraved, some with pictures of animals, and some with beaded stems.
"My sister came up with the idea, and at first I was sceptical about the whole thing," says Phillip Tetley, one of the business partners.
Tetley says the store opened in 1991, operating from a garage. From these humble beginnings, the business expanded, and today employs 50 people, at a small plant in Pelindaba near Pretoria.
The Ubuntu village store is funded by South African Breweries; and "even after the Summit, we are definitely going to be sponsoring the project," says SAB's Winnie Malinga.
"We plan to extend the project to other parts of the country. It is a brilliant idea for creating jobs, promoting entrepreneurship, but most importantly generating environmental awareness."
SAB has shown its determination to create jobs, says Malinga, by bringing two other groups to the Green Glass project. "We have brought in Dumi Khanyile, who, together with helpers, collects bottles all over the country, and we have also brought in Sakhisintu - a rural women's organisation that has been contracted to bead the stems of the glasses."
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