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CLEAN-UP OF KIMBERLEY’S OLD GREENPOINT BOLSTERED

Plastic Waste In Exchange For Cold Drink: Dept Environment, Forestry and Fisheries partnered with Coca Cola as part of the Presidential Good Green Deeds campaign unleashed in Kimberley's Greenpoint suburb.
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Kimberley – President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Good Green Deeds campaign aimed at a drive towards a clean South Africa which is free of litter and illegal dumping has taken off in one of Kimberley’s oldest suburbs, Greenpoint, to a resounding success today.

Tons of plastic waste in empty cold drink bottles were retrieved as hordes of residents responded positively in exchanging 10 recycle bottles for a 2litre cold drink in Coca Cola’s new blend of differently flavoured Beat products. Today’s Good Green Deeds campaign is a partnership between government’s national and provincial Departments of Environment and Coca Cola Beverages Africa.

“We calling on the citizens of South Africa to keep their places clean, whether it is their streets, backyards and homes. Hopefully if it can start there, then we can keep out towns, cities and the country clean.

“With our cleanliness also comes our safety. It is about driving a culture, a conscious in keeping our environment clean through active citizenship. Our mobilisation across the country is to make people more aware of the recycling value of our waste.

“Through waste you can create jobs. We have a community here where there is poverty and joblessness, hopefully we can come back and look at recycling initiatives,” asserted Mark Gordon, the Waste Management Deputy Director General in the national Department of Environment, Fisheries and Forestry.

Around 11 o’clock, Coca Cola’s mountain of give-away cold drinks had sunk and the multinational company’s Regional Public Affairs and Communications Inland Manager Pinky Lebitso was contemplating improvising with stationary.

“There is a new strategy that was implemented called world without waste in realising what waste is doing to the environment, as a business we committed to ensuring that we recycle every bottle that we sell into the community we must bring it back and recycle it. We are saying by 2030 we would have achieved that goal.

“The whole idea is to raise awareness that waste is money. If you separate your waste at home, you are able to sell it and get money for it. Let us teach even kids that if you see a plastic bottle, you see money. Today, we not giving cash but we are giving a cold drink,” enthused Lebitso.

“I have managed to collect 60 bottles from home and in the veld with my friends, which we cleaned, hence we now have a total of six bottles of cold drink,” beamed a young Jerome Jacobs.

Greenpoint’s councillor Norman Maditse was also at hand monitoring the clean-up campaign which he said will be a boost for tourism. A major clean-up campaign was also recently launched by the provincial government at a cost of over R4.3 million in in this residential area, nearest to Kimberley’s airport.

By Thabo Mothibi

 

 

Good Green Deeds: Hordes of youth in Greenpoint exchanged plastic waste for cold drinks.

 

A Good Earnings: Smiling ear to ear is 14 year-old Andruleen Botha who must have collected over 40 plastic bottles for her 4 bottles of 2litre cold drinks.

 

These youngsters were seen retrieving from household and the held plastic waste.

 

DALRRDENC AT WORK: Government employees from Dept Environment and Nature Conservation were collecting all kinds of waste next to the N8 and Greenpoint.
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Thabo Mothibi is a former broadcast journalist (TV and Radio) – with specialist reporting experience; SABC Political/Parliamentary and TRC Teams over a period of five years (1995 to 2000).

One key foreign assignment - is the 11-nation African Connection Rally – overland journey from Africa’s northern-most pole in the coastal Tunisian city of Bizerte to the southern-most pole in South Africa’s Cape Agulhas. From the journalistic years, Thabo then delved into Government media liaison and serving two former Ministers and three MECs. He became the Northern Cape Provincial Government’s first department based Communications Director at Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development - 2008-2010 – where he also served as Head of Ministry from 2003 – 2008.

As a former anti-apartheid activist, his political background and professional training aided him in spearheading the Northern Cape ANC’s 2004 National Elections media and publicity campaign and that of the 2006 Local Government Elections.

Whilst based in Waterkloof in Pretoria -2010 to end 2011, he consulted for Manstrat Agricultural Intelligence, then returned to the Northern Cape in 2012 to date, to consult independently and pursue other entrepreneurial interests in media and communications through KwaVuko Communications and Marketing.

Thabo Mothibi obtained his NQF7 through Wits University’s Graduate School of Public and Development Management (P&DM) in Johannesburg, a Unilever Mandela Rhodes Academy for Marketing and Communications Academy (UMRA). The goal of the NQF7 programme was to educate and train public and private sector professional communicators and marketers in government communications..