At the entrance are piles of plastic rubbish that has neatly been compressed into plastic blocks, each measuring up to two metres high. In each block are hundreds of thousands of plastic bags and plastic containers. Welcome to the Namibia Polymer Recyclers' factory in Okahandja. Here the plastic rubbish is the business. The factory recycles plastics.

Harry Erasmus, Minister of Environment and Tourism Willem Konjore and Theo Saunderson touring the plastic recycling factory in Okahandja. Businessman Frankie Fredericks can be seen in the background.

One of its directors, Sidney Martins says if the compressed bundles of plastics were to be unbundled they would fill the entire factory building to the brim. The factory churns out between 150 and 200 tons of compressed plastic per month.
The plastic is sourced from various suppliers who collect the waste plastic from the general public. NPR is encouraging young Namibians to become entrepreneurs in the plastic recycling business by collecting waste plastic and selling it to NPR.
There are currently four suppliers of waste plastics. In Windhoek it is Rent-A-Drum and Move a Mess. In the coastal towns, Kleentek and Westcoast Recyclers are collecting the waste plastic.
The recycling process starts with the unbundling of the plastic blocks. Plastic is fed into a shredding machine that turns it into tiny pieces. These pieces are placed into a mill – a very small mill compared to the shredding machine – which pounds the pieces into coarse powder.
The granulated powder comes with a tangy smell, not too overwhelming, but nevertheless a chemical odour.
It is this smelly granulated powder that is turned into small pellets, the size of maize grains. This last process is done on four different lines. The powder is heated in a machine after which the by-product is pushed through seven holes, each hole the size of a pencil.
From these holes, long codes are formed and these are dipped into a tank of water which has spinning cutting spinning blades. Then viola! The plastic grains.
The entire process uses no chemicals but the processes tend to use a lot of water as well as electricity.
Namibia Polymer Recyclers sells the recycled products to Plastic Packaging, its mother company based in Windhoek, and its other associated companies in the region. Plastic Packaging manufacture black plastic, water pipes, black refuse bags, water drums and many other plastic materials.
It supplies plastic products to Lubango and Benguela in southern Angola, as well as to its Upington branch that supplies Northern Cape.
The company is jointly owned by Olympic silver medallist Frankie Fredericks, Martin, Harry Erasmus and Theo Saunderson.