Africa

Summary
International Synergies seeks to establish a foundation from which a national programme can be launched in South Africa, providing support to develop a five year strategy for the implementation of industrial symbiosis and by assessing the potential capacity for a national programme.

A pilot programme in the Gauteng Province began in August 2010 to help address sustainable development and the sharing of best practice. This region was chosen because it has a large cross section of industry sectors, consisting of small to large industries companies. The project is part of the UK-South Africa Sustainable Development Dialogue programme and enables International Synergies to demonstrate how industrial symbiosis can contribute towards sustainability by sharing best practice from its leading projects.

To facilitate the in-country delivery partners to recruit industry members to the programme International Synergies has provided support and the tools required to carry out a successful workshop, which took place in February. To assist in the identification of synergies between programme members the company's proprietary synergy management software, SYNERGie, has been installed. The results from the workshop are to be analysed to assess the potential to establish a fully formed national programme.

Impact
Using International Synergies' SYNERGie software data will be analysed from a number of sources including existing databases and programme run workshops to establish the scale of a potential follow on project. Potential funding streams are also to be investigated, together with the alignment of any potential industrial symbiosis programme with the South African waste strategy.