RAW Helps Animals While Keeping The Environment Clean

16th October 2020

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Recycle For Animal Welfare (RAW) is an organisation that recycles glass and cardboard collected from areas in the East Rand in a continuous effort to produce funds to assist animals in need, while simultaneously helping to clean up the environment. They have drop off points in Primrose, Edenvale, Marlands and Witfield.

Founders Judy Croukamp Knox and John Ancill started collecting glass in 2016, but went public with the initiative in 2017. RAW (NPC 2020/126835/08) began as a sterilisation programme only, but they now provide anything an animal needs.

RAW’s main aim is to assist any animal that needs help, be that a sterilisation, an emergency caesarean, parvovirus treatment, an accident, food support, a kennel, taking in a litter of puppies and sterilising the adults, as well as strays. They also assist people who cannot afford veterinarian care.

RAW recycles glass and cardboard to financially support the organisation. Their supporting recycling company is Remade Recycling and their supporting vet is Witfield animal hospital. They have numerous drop off points with wheelie bins as well as three glass skips.

‘Before we had our glass skips and a trailer, I used to do this in my Hyundai i10. You’ll be surprised what that little i10 can do when a person has a great passion. I took my Christmas bonus one year and bought the trailer. I also traded in my i10 and bought a bakkie,’ said Croukamp Knox.

How you can help

Those wanting to support RAW can either drop the glass and cardboard at their drop off points or RAW can collect. The founders have full-time jobs, so they do their rescue work after working hours and weekends. ‘We leave home round 7:30am on a Saturday morning to start collecting and get back home round 16:30pm. We get back dirty and tired but it is worth it. We love meeting the people that support us,’ said Croukamp Knox.

The funds that they get from their recycling goes directly to their vet bill. ‘We understand that not everyone can afford to support a rescue organisation, so we ask for something that is going into the dustbin anyway but which we will turn into money for our vet bill.’

Recycling waste collected

Dec 2017 – May 2018 (manual collection: 16 tons)
May 2018 – September 2018 (skip collections): 37 tons.
October 2018 – December 2019: 139 tons.
January 2020 – Oct 2020: 77 tons.

‘Unfortunately the Covid lockdown hit us hard. We could not go out and collect the glass and Consol was closed for glass recycling. We had no income at all. During the first 3 levels of lockdown, our vet bill rose to R30,000. We are really blessed to have an amazing supporting vet that knows we will pay our bill no matter what.’ In order to help pay for the bill, they collected 9 tons of K4 cardboard from May 2020 – Oct 2020.