I was hoping to get some photo's of the manufacturing plant, but no such luck as there were signs everywhere stating no photography allowed. Here is the not so glamorous dump/waste area.
This morning I went through to the company that we are partnering with a sustainability project regarding their waste material. With the discussions we had last week they would start separating the waste we will collect leaving those outside of the skip. We found a few bags in the skip and once we have our own mini skip on site his won't happen.
The plan is to move the skips over and place them closer together so our mini skip once ordered will be placed in tis area. I have not ordered the skip yet and will only do that next week.
The bags are actually quite large and would guess weigh somewhere between 45 and 60 Kg's each. Due to their size they are hard to pick up and why this is a thumb suck for now. I will collect the first batch on Thursday and then we will have a better understanding of volumes once we weigh the bags.
Personally I was hoping and expecting for a far heavier bag as we need tonnage as the filler in the punch bags. The heaviest bag we have is around the 45Kg mark so as a reference id we need 1000 heavy punch bags monthly that is 45 tons of filler. This company would only provide 10% of our monthly needs.
The other factory they have is in Swaziland and after discussions today they will see if they can bring some waste back. This may actually cost the company financially, but they are looking at sustainability issues which is becoming a priority it seems.
The likelihood of empty trucks returning from Swaziland are slim ,but you do not know unless you ask he question. The only stupid question is the one not asked and you have to explore every avenue. The other thought raised was what if every truck returned with 5% of their load being material waste which would hopefully help us get closer to our tonnage goals.
We know how many punch bags we have to manufacture each month being around the 1 500 figure but do not know the actual break down of the order. I would think the majority would be the bigger bags and why we would need roughly 50 tons per month of waste material. That would mean 1000 of these bags or 33 daily.
Still looking on the bright side it saves us money by doing good at the same time and could open up similar projects with other companies. This company is part of an umbrella group of companies and there must be others who could sign up to this venture. There are 64 companies under their corporate umbrella with one clothing manufacturer and will be pushing and prodding for their involvement depending on where they are situated.
As a business if I can get all of the filler required for a charitable fee because I will be donating funds for the waste material which will fund a community project most likely in the area of Germiston, Johannesburg.