The sixth Recycled Plastic Product of the Year Awards is now open for entries. Hosted by the South African Plastics Recycling Organisation (SAPRO), the awards aims to acknowledge the wide variety of products that are locally manufactured using recycled materials.

Previous overall winners include the City of Cape Town and MPACT Plastic Containers with their Fifty/50 Wheelie Bin (2015), Unilever's Sunlight Dishwashing bottle (2013), Lasher Tools' Eco-Wheelbarrow (2012), Woolworths and Polypet with their 1.5-litre juice bottle (2011) and Tufflex Materials' railway sleeper made from mixed materials (2010).

Winners of this year’s competition will be announced at a gala dinner in Gauteng during Clean-Up and Recycle SA Week (11-17 September 2017).

Product categories and judging criteria

In order to encourage even greater participation and entries by local converters and innovators, this year’s competition will have the following five distinct product categories:

Products made from 100% post-consumer recyclate

Products containing a percentage of post-consumer recyclate

Products made from recycled mixed materials

Novel and Artistic products - i.e. articles made from discarded plastics products

New Ideas category - anything that can be made from recycled materials. It does not have to be a product as yet, just the idea clearly explained on a poster or mock-ups.

A gold, silver and bronze winner will be announced in each of the product categories which will also acknowledge the recycler of the material, the manufacturer of the product, as well as the brand owner. The overall winning entry will walk away with the SAPRO trophy for the Best Recycled Product for 2017.

Judging criteria

Entries will be judged on a number of criteria by a panel of judges who are experts in plastics, packaging, recycling, product design and marketing. The criteria they will use when adjudicating each entry includes: the life expectancy of the product, the sustainability (i.e. long-term demand and market acceptance of product), the measures taken to ensure product consistency and customer satisfaction despite recycled material content, tonnage (or potential tonnages) of plastics that were converted and therefore diverted from landfill, technical achievements in manufacturing to overcome recycled material challenges, replacement of alternative materials and the so-called “wow-factor” of the product.

Although various weighting could be used to judge products objectively, SAPRO is looking for products that will grow the demand for recyclate, help to focus on the quality of products and to stimulate innovation.

Rules, regulations and entry forms

Any company in the SADC region may enter the competition, provided that the recycled material originated in South Africa. Products that were entered in previous years’ competitions, but failed to win, are also eligible to enter again. The closing date for entries is Thursday, 10 August 2017.

Entry forms and competition rules can be obtained online from www.plasticrecyclingsa.co.za.

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