Recyclers grow in capacity

The Recycle Namibia Forum appointed Patricia Hoeksema as its chairperson at the forum’s first annual general meeting held recently. At the same meeting, Wolfie Duvenhage was appointed as the vice-chairperson of the forum with Pauline Haufiku appointed as the treasurer and Wolfgang Schenck as coordinator.
The forum was established as a non-profit membership organisation on 7 June 2011 with the purpose of coordinating projects to promote recycling, and the reduction and reuse of so-called waste in Namibia. While the Chairman’s report cited numerous successes over the past 10 months since the inauguration of the forum, its greatest milestone has been the growth of the schools recycling competition.
When the competition was held for the first time in 2009, only 10 schools participated. Three years later, it now covers 39 schools in five towns. It started as an informal arrangement amongst the members of what later became the Recycle Namibia Forum. This year the participating schools are from Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, Tsumeb, Ondangwa and Windhoek.
According to, Wolfgang Schenck, coordinator of the forum, one of the challenges the Recycle Namibia Forum will address during the course of the year is to engage stakeholders to ensure that the Environmental Tax which the Ministry of Finance considers imposing, does not affect pricing of products for which a full recycling value chain exists. This will be to the detriment of the achievement of the forum’s objectives and will jeopardise jobs created by this growing sector, Schenck said.