Prisca Majola collects more than her total body weight of cardboard every day. In the morning she rises before dawn to beat the rubbish removal vans. She spends the first five hours scrounging through the bags on the street and the green bins outside the blocks of flats. For her 70kg load she gets paid R28.
Having long put aside her dignity, she rips open the black bags relentlessly and faces everyone’s waste; yesterday’s supper, the rotting smells of society’s discards. Working methodically, she moves from one bag to another.
She knows what she is looking for. She is not looking for food. She wants pizza boxes, newspapers and white paper.
“The food is bad [rotten]. I look for newspapers, books and boxes,” says the 32-year-old mother of two. Whatever else she finds — an old school suitcase, an odd earring, a cassette tape — is a bonus.
She breaks up the boxes, packages them tightly and then lifts the heavy load on top of her head. Her slight frame belies the strength and poise that will transport her cardboard to its ultimate destination.
Phillip Dludlu’s day starts at 3am. He leaves his shack at Cato Crest, in Mayville, and makes his way to a sheltered spot underneath a flyover near the Tollgate Bridge.
He goes to check that the cardboard he stashed the day before is still there. His load is too heavy to carry, so he must store it somewhere overnight. He has collected more than 100kg and is worried someone might have stolen it. So far nothing like this has happened to him, though other collectors have not been so lucky.
Dludlu pays an elderly homeless man a small fee to look after his cardboard stash. And in so doing, this budding 36-year-old entrepreneur has created informal employment for another person. “Shame, what can I do? He is an old man and he can’t work. At least I know my cardboard is safe. I pay him according to how much I make,” he says.
He spends the next few hours soaking the cardboard in a huge plastic drum filled from a city council tap in a nearby park. “They want it like this. The water makes it heavy. I get more money.”
Then the hard work begins. The search for more cardboard continues. First he goes to a garage near Overport City. It is one of three “contracts”, or informal understandings, he has established with businesses in the Mayville/Berea area to take away their empty cardboard boxes.
At the garage he finds a few boxes. He breaks them down, stacks them into a pile, secures them tightly and lifts them on to his head. He walks the 4km back to his spot near Tollgate Bridge with the load on his head.
Then he walks to a fabric shop on Umbilo Road, 3km away. On his way back he stops off at a supermarket chain store that is his main supplier. Here he is known by name. After getting his cardboard ready, he sweeps the back area of the supermarket clean.
“I wish I had transport, a trolley, something. If I had transport, I could make money. Cardboard is money,” he says. The cardboard recycling is the only source of income for this man who has six hungry mouths to feed at his family home in Ladysmith.
While he waits for the boxes outside the supermarket, Dludlu does not sit still. He sets up a makeshift table and sells chips, loose sweets and cigarettes to passersby. He keeps his hands busy making grass mats that he also sells.
“I don’t want to steal. I just can’t find work,” he explains. This is despite his having passed matric and a code 14 driver’s licence. He has worked all over the country on long-distance trucks and for a short while worked as a barman in a hotel.
Although what Majola and Dludlu make in a day may seem like peanuts, it keeps absolute poverty at bay. “I can pay my kids’ school fees, R350 a year. I buy food for their lunchboxes,” says Majola proudly.
The two are part of an increasing number of people who are turning the recycling of cardboard and newspaper from households into a source of income. But some authorities seem out of touch with the phenomenon and the speed at which it is growing.
Says the national Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism’s acting head of waste management, S’bu Gamede: “We are not aware of people digging outside the houses. We know about the ones at the landfill. We will have to investigate this.
“The problem is, we need to start sorting our waste at source. If we can do this, then we won’t have people digging in the rubbish outside the homes. We need big companies to get on board and supply homes with different coloured bags so we can start doing this.”
Gamede adds there is potential for small businesses to develop in the sector and links between companies and the people need to be forged in order to stop exploitation. “For people like this, all I can say is at the moment they should make use of the poverty relief fund that could assist sustainable projects.”
Unofficial estimates put the number of cardboard collectors in the Durban area at 2 000 people. A survey of three areas conducted last year by the Durban Solid Waste/Keep Durban Beautiful Association documented 91 collectors in the core central business district, the beachfront area and Warwick Triangle.
“I see a lot more new faces and competition has started. I have heard about squabbles over territory,” says Ndyebo Ngingqizana, the waste minimisation assistant at Durban Solid Waste who conducted the survey.
Durban Solid Waste established a buy-back centre, but it has not drawn many collectors. “Because the majority of collectors cannot read, they do not trust the operator to pay them the correct amount for their load. Many remain loyal to a company called Babs Waste Removal that has been around a long time,” explains Ngingqizana.
Durban Solid Waste has recommended to the city council that this informal trade sector become standardised and that a cardboard collectors’ association should be formed, with local committees for each street or area.
“Some of the responsibilities of the local committees could be to discourage collectors from selling on pavements and liaising with a relevant municipal person for the provision of storage facilities for their personal belongings and the promotion of a clean environment. We need business to enter into an informal partnership with the collectors over price and distribution.”
Ngingqizana’s survey showed the majority of collectors are women aged between 41 and 70, though in the beachfront area men tend to outnumber the women. Most walk about 10km a day in their search for cardboard.
Businesses in the central Durban area produce an average total volume of 7 491kg of waste each day. “These cardboard collectors save individual businesses up to R1 866 a month in waste removal costs. They also promote recycling and this is, in turn, of great benefit to the city as it saves space in our landfill site,” the survey says.
Ngingqizana calls on the Department of Trade and Industry to assist the collectors. “These people are not being recognised. We need to educate and empower them. We need more buy-back centres so we can create small businesses for them.
“We need action now. It is because of unemployment the numbers are growing. At least they are trying to earn an honest living. What they do goes a long way towards crime prevention.”
Back in Mayville, Dludlu and Majola have gathered with about 30 other collectors of varying ages on a grassy verge. Their loads are littered around them in piles. They spend the time sorting, wetting and arranging the cardboard.
To the outside eye, the untidy group of cardboard collectors might appear unorganised and arbitrary, but to an insider they are ordered and they have a purpose. They are awaiting the arrival of Zain Cassim, the man who buys their loads of cardboard.
When Cassim arrives with a two-ton truck, he hangs a fish scale on a low branch of a tree. Everyone gathers around and the weighing begins. Each collector is given a number, their cardboard is weighed and thrown into the back of his truck. They get 40c a kilo for cardboard and 50c for white paper.
Cassim works on commission for Babs Waste. For a load of about two tons, he receives R300. He collects at least two loads a day, stopping off at collection points in and around the city. He hires two men to help him weigh and load. He pays their wages, as well as wear and tear on his truck.
“I have been in this business for eight years and let me tell you, it is growing, definitely. These people know where to meet me. I go all over. The message spreads,” he says.
After everyone has been paid, the collectors quickly disappear. Dludlu heads back to the supermarket in Hunter Street for his afternoon load.
Majola stares at the money in her hand. “What will you do with it?” I ask. “Buy food for lunchbox,” she says without hesitation.