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OWNER of Pure Bottles Packaging Tshepiso Molepo has proved he was ready to take his glass bottle recycling start-up to the next level.

That s after the 25-year-old was last year named the Greater Johannesburg region winner of the Business Partners/SME Toolkit Global Entrepreneurship Week s Business Plan competition.

His business currently operates informally from the back yard of his home at Sebokeng in the Vaal, south of Gauteng.

I have approached government small business institutions to help me purchase a glass bottle cleaning machine,” said Molepo.

Things are promising, especially this year, judging by the responses I have been getting.”

The entrepreneur met his business partners at a local library. There, they brainstormed ideas before formalising the venture.

Molepo showed his resourcefulness when he got a network of informal bottle collectors to sell dirty bottles to him, thus creating jobs for them.

He then hygienically cleaned and sterilised the bottles for commercial reuse, selling them to major companies in the beverage, pharmaceutical and food industries.

I’m unemployed like most of my partners, who are graduates from university, he said.

The idea for the business came to me in 2011, after realising the health hazard and environmental impact of littering caused by glass bottles.

I then went to the internet to research the recycling of glassware.”

After realising he had no competition in the Vaal area, Molepo approached the National Empowerment Fund. There, he submitted a business plan.

The proposal for funding the machine to be used in his venture has been sent to National Youth Development Agency, the Gauteng Enterprise Propeller, Small Enterprise Development Agency and the ministry of small business.

They have all been helpful in exposing me to the available business opportunities.

The local ward councillor pledged to provide land to set up a factory for Molepo’s company.

I want to set up the business in one of the many industrial areas in the Vaal, he said.

I thank Business Partners Limited for helping me with a mentor. I’ve learnt a lot about the formal side of running a business and balancing the books.”

Molepo is proud of being an informal sector employee, although he aims to formalise operations because his business is labour intensive.

But his biggest headache remains funding.

They want a tax clearance certificate, but we are not making that kind of money. We are still operating on a small scale,” he said. Growing the business has been a challenge because we can’t meet some of the funding requirements”

Ever optimistic, Molepo said he had come a long way to just give up on his dream when doors in the form of business coaching and mentoring had opened up for him.

His motto is: Take care of the environment for it to take care of itself.”