Several donor partners came together to visit recycling innovations being developed at Samoa Breweries Limited at Vaitele on Monday. 

The visit was a display of the programmes' safety. 

The Samoa Breweries Company's project programme including the mission Pacific programme, waste oil collection programme, a glass recycling programme as well as the wastewater treatment program.

Samoa Breweries' General Manager, Brent Adams, told the Samoa Observer that he hopes they can work together to increase recycling across the board in the country.

“The purpose of today is an opportunity for the Samoa Recycling and Waste Management Association (S.W.R.M.A.) and ourselves so we are able to show all the ongoing recycling projects in progress all at one time,” he said.

There are presently four components to the recycling initiative. 

Mission Pacific Samoa conducts buy backs, sorting and weighing stations, which are used to collect and export plastic for bottle to bottle recycling.

Vailima Waste oil stockpile where the Samoa Waste Oil Management Programme has collected 6,150 litres of waste oil, which had been transported back to Tafaigata Swamp Facility for exporting for further recycling.

Vailima also collects grains left over from the brewing process and repurposes them for agriculture.

A recently launched glass bottle recycling programme houses sanding tooldsto revert glass back to sand, which is then reused to repair potholes.  The bulk of the glass bottles are transported back to S.R.M.W.A. HQ for  a CERO glass waste recycling project recently announced by the United Kingdom’s High Commissioner.

“The benefits of our recycling programme are that we see in terms of minimizing the waste on the island but also recycling of P.E.T. (Polyethylene terephthalate - an artificial product used to make bottles) so we don’t had to generate new [bottles]that already coming on the island are already recycled.”

He said that by 2025 he was hoping to see several of the programmes becopme self-sustaining. 

Mr.  Adam said that the only challenge that faces with the project are its finances. 

But as a business they are responsible to make sure it works and obviously added resources required to all of these things to keep processes and repurpose the right way.

 “We are very thankful for the opportunity that our working partners come and see these, and hopefully other businesses can help us with the programme,” he said. 

The manager also said that the programme is a good opportunity for all the schools in the country to raise more awareness about recycling and do something good to the environment by collecting plastic bottles.