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ENOUGH OF THE RUBBISH |
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The Cape Times of the 25th April 2007 carries the story of a local man who encountered difficulties when trying to dispose of toxic waste. He was advised by a council official that he should just discard of this waste (poisons, old medicine, pesticides and old batteries) in his bin, as everyone else does.
So this hazardous waste, along with every Capetonian's average 2 kg of daily waste, will make its way to one of the three remaining landfills around the Mother City (at Coastal Park in the Muizenberg area, Belville and Visserhok) - all of which are just about filled to capacity. Early 2006 saw the closing of the Faure landfill site. Given that Cape Town produces 5000 - 6000 tons of waste a day, the remaining landfill sites are under tremendous pressure. Rustim Karaan, director of solid waste in the city, told delegates at the Cape Town Waste Minimization Summit (held 11 April 2007) that local landfill sites designed to last 20 years are filling up in half that time! South Africa has a long way to go to reach the government's tough goals on environmental sustainability, set at the World Summit in Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, that includes a 50% reduction in the volume of hazardous waste generated and a 25% reduction in volumes of landfill waste by 2012 - along with an optimistic zero waste situation by 2022. Ninety percent of our waste is being thrown away as useless, even though between 70 and 80 percent of this derives from non-renewable resources and could be recycled and used again. Recyclable rubbish is buried alongside loads of e-waste (electronics), white waste (electrical parts), and toxic waste (from industrial processes) oil, scrap metal and building rubble. The current building boom is quickly filling up the City's landfill sites. Last year, 900 000 tons of builders' rubble was dumped - which should have been recycled. The City will not be able to accept the tons of rubble from the demolishing of the old Green Point Stadium. Rubbish dumps and compacted and covered daily and have to adhere to minimum requirements, based on international regulation. These are still toxic time bombs though! Landfill sites form a toxic juice called leachates, which leaks into the Earth over the years and can cause great harm to our groundwater. The lack of air and sunlight to the dumps actually inhibits the decomposing process! Furthermore, landfill sites are major greenhouse gas emission culprits. The explosive methane gas produced in the process is a greater contributor to global warming than carbon dioxide. This stink of a problem, does present an opportunity to generate electricity in the future. Alternative energy is being tapped from only one landfill site in the whole of Africa: at Mariannhill in Kwa Zulu Natal, which began generating electricity at the beginning of March this year. It is expected to produce 1000kW of electricity which is to be sold back onto the national grid. The site is also the only landfill conservancy in the World, with a public forest and grassland and a newly established wetland! At the same time, landfill sites can generate millions of rand in carbon financing, as defined by the Kyoto Protocal. Under this arrangement, developed countries, which are obligated to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, pay other countries to do so on their behalf. So for every ton of greenhouse gas emission reduced in South Africa, a negotiable credit is to be earned and sold on the market. Considering that South African municipalities report over R195 million a year is spent on litter abatement, which equates to a reported 15 cents per piece of litter. Our citizens are notoriously lax about waste minimization and recycling efforts in comparison with other countries where recycling is an accustomed part of domestic culture. Currently only 14% of the City of Cape Town's waste is recycled. Mark Swilling, head of the Sustainability Institute at the University of Stellenbosch (who also participated in the Waste Minimization Summit) says that Cape Town has 900 000 households, of which 28 percent are middle income earners and 14 percent are rich. The rich generate between 40 and 50 percent of the waste. This is largely due to the lack of public information and the implementation of services and infrastructure to shift from traditional waste disposal to waste management. A number of recycling projects and buy-back centres are already in place. Most of these are industry funded and managed. Glass recycling has for many years been executed by Enviroglass (the big green igloos used to spot our urban landscape; the remainder now covered in amateur graffiti). A new player on the scene is The Glass Recycling Company, which promised to provide 160 glass banks for the greater Cape Town region by March 2007… None are to be seen. The Collect-A-Can awareness campaign is probably the most recognized. This non-profit project is backed by Mittal Steel. More than 37,000 collectors are collecting cans, an estimated 82% of whom would otherwise be unemployed. Collect- A- Can's educational programme is far-reaching and involves approximately 700 schools across the region. Recycling metals uses 90% less energy than creating new ones and metal can be recycled over and over again. Commercial and residential paper makes up to 40% of land-filling waste. Eliminating this would mean doubling the life span of our landfills. Local paper producers encourage recycling through schools as well as business support. Some of the producers even offer a weekly/ monthly collection from larger clients. Plastic is one of the best inventions of our time, but the hardest to get rid of. One bottle can take up to 10,000 years to degrade - thus being one of the biggest contributors to pollution. The Plastics Federation of South Africa launched Enviromark in 1997 to showcase the industry's commitment to the environment. Enviromark is focused on litter awareness and the recovery and recycling of plastics. All of this good effort however does not amount to sufficient, collaborated ACTION. One of the major challenges faced by these projects in their recovery of recyclable waste is that "separation at source" is not enforced or encouraged. If every citizen would take personal responsibility for their own mess - it would save some unfortunate collectors from digging PET (plastic bottles used mostly for beverage packaging) and the likes from landfills. The best scenario would be that our efforts are supported by local authorities, through the provision of systems or services in our communities to simplify waste minimization. This also presents an opportunity to create jobs and encourage entrepreneurship while preserving our environment. But in the meantime, have recycle bins at home and office; locate your nearest drop site - The Oasis Project and Footprints are excellent Cape Town community initiatives worth your support (both of these are job creation community initiatives). There are another 21 drop off sites in Cape Town; contact City of Cape Town's Waste Wise Programme for information. And recently a new recycling service has been established for households in Cape Town: Abundance Recycling will collect your waste weekly and deliver to Footprints and Oasis for sorting. Environmental sustainability is a BIG issue and must also move into the boardroom. Businesses in South Africa really should consider the quantities of waste generated, in comparison with the bulk quantities of environmental resources required for profit making. To create one cell phone, 75kg resources are used and a toothbrush takes 1.5 kg of resources. (Published in City of Cape Town's newsletter) After all, "There is no money to be made on a dead planet." Business centers service thousands of individuals, the positive contribution made by companies' reduce, reuse recycling efforts will not only be measured by the company's initiatives, but by the resulting inspired action in staff and clients' homes and personal environments. Frankly, I've had enough of dealing with everybody else's rubbish in my environment! If concerned citizens all make some concerted effort and enough noise to encourage local governmental action, we soon will have the Cape back in shape! _____________________________________________________ Written by Janine Johnston, Exhibition Manager of the Natural & Organic Products Exhibition taking place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 12-14 October 2007. Tel: 021-671 0935, email: Janine@specialised.com, website: www.naturalandorganic.co.za |
