IN just two months, Goodyear South Africa has managed to save 5,6 million litres of water – the amount 180 houses would use in a month – through an intensive, ongoing recycling initiative.

While water restrictions do not yet apply to industry, the tyre firm is trying to save where it can, in light of the Eastern Cape’s critical water shortage.

Utilities manager Douglas North said last week that the Uitenhage plant had adopted a three-fold approach to saving water. It recycled waste water from its boiler house, collected and reused water run-off, and ensured steam condensate from various production processes did not go to waste.

The recovered water was either redirected through a newly-installed, separate plumbing system to the plants’ toilets or used as makeup water for cooling machinery. The firm had also installed numerous water meters to monitor water usage – and further reduce consumption where it could.

North said: “Goodyear’s biggest water user is our boiler house. It uses an electro-boiler – where the water itself is the element and therefore must be very pure. We make use of a reverse osmosis filter plant to purify city water, but it has a high backwash cleaning cycle. For each litre of water it cleans up, about half a litre is wasted. This water used to go into the sewer system. Now, it is directed to our toilets or process water that is used to cool machinery.”

He said the recycled water was being closely monitored by water treatment experts to ensure it was sufficiently clean and not corrosive to the firm’s piping system.

“The water recovered from the reverse osmosis process has a high dissolved solid content. This is reduced by blending it with recycled water.”

Goodyear Risk Control manager Rene van der Merwe said the plant also utilised a pit designed to catch storm water run-off along with any other water resulting from leaks, for example, in the plant.

“The water is passed through filters and then redirected to a storage tank and collected as required.”

The company’s water saving initiative was primarily driven by the severe water shortage in the Eastern Cape. However, it also formed part of a larger Goodyear philosophy termed the “3-R principle” – reduce, reuse and recycle

“From an environmental point of view, Goodyear We evaluate all potential waste by the 3-R principle to minimise our impact on the environment,” Van der Merwe said.

In addition to its water-saving initiative, the plant was recently recognised for its eco-friendly waste management – resulting in an 85% reduction of non-recyclable waste – with its on-site waste management supplier achieving ISO 14001 certification, one of the highest global standards for environmental management systems.

source:  The Weekend Post

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The new Garden Route National Park was formally declared by Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk at a function in Knysna at the weekend. The massive new conservation area, one of only four national parks in the world incorporating urban areas, covers about 121000ha, incorporating about 52000ha of newly proclaimed park land and 68500 hectares of the Wilderness and Tsitsikamma national parks.

It straddles the Eastern and Western Cape provinces as well as the Eden and Cacadu district municipalities and the local municipalities of George, Knysna, Bitou and Koukamma. The environmental diversity of the park includes indigenous forests, the Knysna estuary, the Wilderness lake areas, marine protected areas, lowland fynbos and mountain catchment areas. Van Schalkwyk said at the function on Friday that new ground was being broken with the establishment of the park and some parts would be fenced off while others would have open boundaries.

“The Garden Route is one of the most important areas in South Africa and one of our crown jewels in terms of biodiversity and its attraction of both foreign and local tourists.”

He said it was increasingly necessary to give economic value to conservation in order to achieve conservation goals, and that the level of conservation protection afforded to the area had increased due to its proclamation as a national park. SANParks chief operating officer Sydney Soundy said the new park contained the largest continuous indigenous forest in the country, spanning about 60500ha all along the Garden Route.

“Its aquatic systems, the Knysna estuary and the Wilderness lake areas, are rated number one and number six (in order of importance) respectively in the country. The fynbos falls within the Cape floristic region, which is a designated global diversity hotspot.”

Soundy said the term “conservation without boundaries” had to become a way of life, not just for major stakeholders but also residents in areas surrounding the park. Van Schalkwyk said South Africa‘s parks were among the country‘s most important conservation and tourism assets, and as such the government had steadily increased expenditure on parks.

“We have invested R411- million in infrastructure development for the period 2006/07 to 2008/09 and a further R245-million is being earmarked for the next medium term expenditure framework period. Other financial assistance has increased from R85,6-million in 2004/05 to R205-million in 2009/10.”

source: The Weekend Post

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