Turning coat hangers to concrete? Meet businessman Johan Coetzee
It started with coat hangers – a large batch of unused plastic coat hangers, delivered to structural engineer Johan Coetzee.
He didn’ t need them to hang up clothes, but to hold up a dream.
Coetzee remembers the moment in some detail: “It was Pepkor, one of their Ackermans stores, who mentioned that they were sitting with quite a lot of coat hangers that they didn’t know what to do with. I said, send me some of that.”
And so it began. Coetzee turned coat hanger plastic waste into a substitute for stone and sand used in conventional concrete mix. It was an important turning point in his dream to reduce the carbon footprint of the building industry, by producing an environmentally-friendly concrete. “The biggest contributor to CO2 emissions in the building industry is manufacturing cement -- but if we put some effort in, we can do something about that.”
Coetzee’s dream is now taking shape as Zerocrete, the company he founded two years ago to take his ideas to market.
But plastic is just one of multiple waste products Coetzee uses. He stumbled upon another ingredient during a trip to Italy – more serendipity for the concrete connoisseur. While other visitors at the Colosseum in Rome were spellbound by Roman history, Coetzee was more interested in a piece of 17th century concrete he spotted at the famous site which, in addition to being an iconic tourism landmark, is an open-air museum of building construction across the ages.
“This piece of concrete was full of pieces of hair,” recalls Coetzee, who was allowed to keep a piece. “In those days they cut the tails of horses and put it in concrete for reinforcing. I thought this was brilliant, because hair takes a very long time to decompose, as you can see if you go and look at ancient mummies of Egypt.”
The ‘hairy’ cement was another ‘Aha moment’ for the innovative businessman; if hair could be used as a ‘binding’ agent to strengthen cement, then why not other ‘waste’ products, like fabric? Coetzee put it to the test, and he now produces a diverse range of alternative cement products that are as strong as conventional cement, but with a lower carbon footprint. “I focus on non-recycled plastics and textiles – that's my business model.”
It’s a model that has already earned him much success, including recognition at the Cape Chamber’s recent Western Cape Innovation Awards where he was able to showcase his story. Instead of paying for cement ingredients, corporates pay him to remove their waste – which he then uses for his product lines.
The waste replaces a large proportion of sand and stone without compromising quality, producing cement that is cheaper and eco ‘friendlier’. A Zerocrete showroom in Riebeek Kasteel boasts a wide variety of items, everything from tables to art sculptures.
Coetzee also uses mining byproducts, as a cement supplement. South Africa is fortunate to have abundant supplement cement material (SCM) resources, which augers well for alternative cement production.
The net result is a major growth industry with massive job creation potential. Coetzee’s company Zerocrete is a case in point, with a fast-growing product line and investors lining up, including a foreign company that has just signed an MOU to launch the product in the US. He believes the multiple product lines have big job-creation potential.
“It’s concrete with a new DNA,” Coetzee says.
Jacques Moolman
President of the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry