Waste Management: How Spier Estate Turns Trash Into Cash

Worldwide, waste generation is fast overtaking landfill availability. Heidi Newton-King, sustainability and human resources director at Spier Wine Estate, recently shared how the estate has succeeded in reducing its proportion of landfill waste to total recycled waste to less than 2%. Jeandré du Preez reports.

- Jeandre Du Preez

South Africa generates almost 54 500t of waste a day, making it the 15th-largest producer of waste in the world, according to the World Bank. Waste management has become a growing environmental concern, and companies have a pivotal role to play in addressing it. One company that has taken this challenge seriously is Spier Wine Estate, which started focusing on sustainability and putting waste management plans in place more than a decade ago.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

In order to reduce the amount of waste it was sending to landfills, Spier decided to improve its recycling efficiency.

“Each section of the business [hospitality, wine operation and farm] sorts its waste individually. The waste is then taken to the farm’s sorting facility and sorted a second time to make absolutely sure that as much as possible is recycled,” explains Heidi Newton-King, sustainability and human resources director at the estate.

The company has partnered with WastePlan, which has an onsite sorting facility at Spier and assists with the recycling.

In 2009, two years after putting a waste measurement process in place, 32% of the total waste went to the landfill. By May of this year, Spier was sending only 1,75% (just under 6t) to the landfill. “This is slightly less than six bakkie loads,” says Heidi.