CAT Africa

Business case

Impact on the ease of innovation, and facilitating uptake of innovations

Innovation

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (SDG12)

Producing building materials and providing services to create residential and non-residential infrastructure and real estate


Construction and Infrastructure

Reuse, repurpose, and recycle waste streams within other industries

Valorise waste streams - open loop

Designing products to resist damage and wear, and serve a long and useful life.

Design for physical durability

Cycle strategies aim to cycle and reuse materials at their highest value: they maximise the volume of secondary materials re-entering the economy, ultimately minimising the need for virgin material inputs and therefore also narrowing flows. Of course, virgin materials will always be needed to a degree: all materials degrade and can’t be cycled infinitely, use energy, and require blending with virgin materials to maintain strength and functionality.

Cycle

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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      Science  Spotted: In an effort to tackle the waste problem in South Africa and to improve the quality of its roads, Shisalanga Construction has started using recycling plastic milk bottles to make roads.  Shisalanga uses high-density polyethene, a thick plastic that is turned into pellets at a local recycling plant. The pellets are then heated at 190 degrees celsius until they dissolve, and are mixed with additives. They replace six per cent of the asphalt’s bitumen binder, so every ton of asphalt contains roughly 118 to 128 bottles. The compound is said to be more durable and water-resistant than conventional asphalt, and able to withstand temperature as high as 70 degrees Celsius and as low as -22 degrees Celsius. Although the cost is similar to existing methods, the company believes that there will be significant financial savings in the long run, as its roads are expected to last longer than the national average of 20 years. In August 2019, Shisalanga Construction became the first company in South Africa to pave a section of road in KwaZulu-Natal, with reused plastic. Two months later, they had repaved more than 400 metres of road, using asphalt made with the equivalent of almost 40,000 recycled two-litre plastic milk bottles. Moving forward, the company has applied to the South Africa National Roads Agency to lay 200 tons of plastic tarmac on the country’s main N3 highway between Durban and Johannesburg. As one of the many creative solutions to preventing plastic waste, the idea originated in India 17 years ago and has been tested in areas across Europe, North America and Australia.  1st January 2020 Email: info@shisalanga.co.za Website: shisalanga.com Contact: shisalanga.com/Contact-Us  

As a market leader in innovation, Shisalanga Construction is leading the way with products such as steel slag manufactured asphalt, a first in South Africa. This product is the preferred aggregate used for asphalt manufacture on the busiest highway in South Africa, the National Route 3 (N3).More recently, in August 2019, we embarked on a ground-breaking initiative by paving a South African road using a locally recycled plastic compound as part of the formula ingredient in the asphalt, becoming the first South African company to successfully complete an application of recycled plastic road by utilising a binding agent that has unique properties and through this, creating a usable and durable solution for the road construction industry.


Half of the plastics we produce are problematic – because of the way we use them. And every day tonnes of plastic waste makes its way into our waterways and oceans where it lives for hundreds of years, polluting coastlines and threatening marine life at home and abroad. 

South Africa

Shisalanga Construction

<p>Shisalanga Construction is the first company in South Africa to begin paving roads out of recycled plastics such as milk bottles. Their innovative product compound is said to be more water-resistant and reliable than traditional asphalt. The business model of the company facilitates the reduction of large quantities of waste, as each ton of asphalt paved contains approximately 118 to 128 milk bottles.</p>