of the dump

Rent-A-Drum is Namibia's leading waste management company located in the Otjomuise settlement in Windhoek and has been operating since 1989.Rent-A-Drum CEO, Gys Louw, says Rent-A-Drum was established to take over garden refuse removal after City of Windhoek announced it would no longer offer this service.The Zone caught up with Abraham Reinhardt, Rent-A-Drum's recycling manager to get an insight of what recycling is all about, how it works and why it is important. Reinhardt defines recycling as the process to change waste materials into new products to reduce the consumption of using raw or virgin material. Reinhardt explains that for the Windhoek households, Rent-A-Drum uses the clear bag system where the households throw all their mixed recyclables into one bag. “This is usually 60-90% of your household waste. The clear bag is then placed next to your municipality wheelie bin on the same day as your normal waste collection,” explained Reinhardt. He added that for every full clear bag you place outside you will receive a new clear bag for the next week's recyclables. These mixed recyclables are then sorted on a conveyer belt at Rent-A-Drum's Material Recovery Facility (MRF).Recycling occurs in three phases. Firstly, the waste is sorted on site and then recyclables are collected and transported to the MRF. The sorting of recyclables may be done at the source for instance within the MRF for selective collection by the recycling vendor and then it is packaged and transported to South Africa for remanufacturing.The MRF forms part of the waste management chain where the dry fraction of municipal solid waste (recyclables) is delivered to be separated, processed and temporarily stored for transport to recycling or remanufacturing. Rent-A-Drum's MRF is state-of-the-art and was the biggest in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) region until the commissioning of a larger one in Kraaifontein, Western Cape in South Africa. Rent-A-Drum also has a weighbridge to record volumes of recyclables received, processed and dispatched from the MRF. “It enables the company to sort and bale mixed recyclables in huge volumes,” said Reinhardt. Reinhardt maintains that recycling is important because Namibia's singular landfill site in Windhoek and dump sites across the country are rapidly reaching their maximum capacity, adding that recycling is a responsibility that we all should share. “People living in Namibia, in towns create an average waste of 3kg per person. That totals to 3 000 tonnes of waste per day and Windhoek alone produces roughly 870 tonnes of waste per day,” said Reinhardt.Rent-A-Drum has a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) processing plant that was inaugurated by the environment minister Pohamba Shifeta in March this year. RDF is a fuel produced from various types of waste and by-products with recoverable calorific or energy values and can be used as alternative fuel source, replacing conventional fossil fuels, for example coal which has a high environmental impact. Rent-A-Drum's RDF is the first of its kind in Namibia and ensures that less waste is sent to landfills. The plant is expected to see about 12 000 tons of non-recyclable material collected by Rent-A-Drum annually. The waste will be converted to alternative fuel annually for use in the Namibian manufacturing sector. This waste will be used at Ohorongo Cement's plant, along with other alternative fuels to fire the cement kiln, which is one of the key processes during cement manufacturing.Rent-A-Drum delivers a recycling service to the citizens of Windhoek, Swakopmund, Walvis Bay, Oshakati and Ondangwa. Rent-A-Drum has similarly worked closely with councils and municipalities as partners on various projects.Moreover Rent-A-Drum offers a wide variety of waste management processes which includes clean-ups at events, destructions, 210-litre metal bin removal used for garden refuse at households and Kleen Bin among other waste management processes. Rent-A-Drum does professional clean-up for events such as Hart van Windhoek, Jazz Festival, Colour Festival and Windhoek Showgrounds. “We have a professional clean-up team during the event and after to ensure the site is properly cleaned,” said Reinhardt. The clean-up team also sorts the recyclables separately from the general waste on site. Rent-A-Drum also does road side clean-ups regarding interlink truck accidents with cargo spills. In 2017 Rent-A-Drum plans to open a new plant that will divert an additional 1 000 tonnes of waste from landfill sites, and expanding the magnitude of recycling commodities that Rent-A-Drum currently collects. MICHAEL KAYUNDE

of the dump

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Namibian Sun 2025-06-20

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of the dump

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Namibian Sun 2025-06-20

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