The unpleasant aromas that hover over refuse bins left at the side of the road for collection by Pikitup trucks make one feel sorry for the people loading, unloading and sorting the foul-smelling domestic waste that emerges from otherwise spotless homes.
It has been said that one can judge the level of civilisation of societies by the way they treat women, children, the elderly and animals. One should add waste — and the environment — to the list. It all boils down to consideration and respect for others, the environment and life itself.
Handling waste is a worldwide problem. Consumers often spend more on the packaging than the actual contents of the items they buy. This packaging ends up being tossed into refuse bins — or on to pavements, in parks, around picnic sites.
Many countries are making efforts to recycle packaging and other waste. In Sweden, for instance, customers can place empty plastic colddrink bottles into a receptacle that coughs out a refund voucher. In Germany, glass sorted by colour is collected from bins outside apartment blocks. In Holland, households are expected to have compost heaps in their gardens for the disposal of domestic organic waste.
In Japan, bins for different categories of waste are placed outside buildings. In Portugal, there are shops that eliminate packaging altogether by selling products such as soap powder, wine and even perfume by the kilogram, litre or millilitre, and customers bring along their own containers.
Kerbside pick-up
In South Africa, Mondi Recycling has set a superb example by delivering special Mondi bags to people’s homes in Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria. These bags are for storing used newspapers, magazines and other recyclable paper and cardboard, which Mondi collects fortnightly in Pretoria and Johannesburg, while a weekly collection exists in Durban.
As an incentive, participants stand a chance of winning prizes, and a set rand-per-ton of paper and cardboard collected by Mondi Recycling is donated to Hospice and to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). It is a good example of an initiative that enables those who care to make a contribution to three worthy causes — environmental conservation, animal welfare and people suffering from terminal illnesses — simply by collecting and making available waste for recycling.
Mondi Recycling’s Kerbside Paper Pick-Up Service came into being 13 years ago, but sadly only 5% of homeowners take advantage of the door-to-door paper and cardboard collection project. The majority of people either ignore it, are unconcerned about it, or are ‘too busy” to make the effort to participate.
Comments Peter Hunter, Mondi’s national sales and marketing manager: ‘We live in a ‘throw-away’ society, and only about 5% of the population is ‘green’. Most people are worried about other things in their lives, and won’t do anything for nothing.”
To increase awareness of the service, Mondi embarked on its rand-per-ton paper partnership with the SPCA and Hospice 18 months ago, to encourage more homeowners to donate time and effort to collecting and recycling their old newspapers, magazines and cardboard. The endeavour is gradually gaining momentum.
Mohammed and the mountain
The problem is not so much that South Africans do not care about the environment. Many do. The problem is often the lack of user-friendly services to facilitate participation in enviro-friendly projects. Not everyone has the transport to cart used paper, metal, plastic and glass to recycling bins that are dotted around many residential areas.
But if Mohammed cannot go to the mountain, why not take the mountain to Mohammed?
Municipalities could take the initiative and provide colour-coded refuse bags to encourage households to sort their refuse before putting it into the Pikitup wheelie bins. Green bags, for example, could be used for organic waste, grey for tins, yellow for plastic, white for bottles and red for unrecyclable trash such as used cotton wool, polythene, etc.
Many concerned individuals already sort waste at home, even washing tins and bottles before placing them in recycling bins, but there are not enough of them yet to make a real difference.
If everyone sorted waste at home, Pikitup workers and informal recyclers would be spared the indignity and health hazards involved in handling reeking, unhygienic waste that is currently dumped into Pikitup’s wheelie bins. Waste that is separated into specific categories ensures that recyclable waste remains recyclable, and does not give off the offensive odours produced by cross-contamination in bins where paper, food, peels, plastic, tins, etc, are tossed together haphazardly.
Municipalities could investigate the possibility of providing homeowners with an incentive to sort waste by reducing their rates and taxes. The benefits all round would be enormous.
Where does it all go?
Most people have no idea what happens to the waste in their bins once it has been collected. Pikitup, which is owned by the City of Johannesburg’s municipality but which is run as a private concern, dumps the waste into five landfill sites.
Informal recyclers collect the reusable waste from the various landfill sites and sell it to third-party contractors approved and appointed by Pikitup. There are 52 garden sites from which suitable organic waste is taken to a composting plant for processing. Plans are in place to appoint third-party contractors at the garden sites to collect the remaining recyclable waste currently disposed of there.
Marius de Villiers, Pikitup’s communication manager, confirms that sorting waste at home ‘would assist the informal recyclers at landfill sites to collect the waste more easily, and would also assist the recycling companies that focus on the collection of specific types of waste”.
Asked about the risk of environmental pollution at landfill sites, De Villiers acknowledges that toxic gases such as methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulphide are emitted as part of the normal decomposition process. These are continuously monitored to ensure that emission levels are kept at a low level in line with industry standards and permit regulations.
‘These gases from the landfill sites cannot seep into water reserves. The only substance that could pose a threat of contaminating groundwater if not managed is leachate.” Leachate is the liquid formed when water percolates through the soil and garbage in a landfill, and contains waste and other contaminants.
De Villiers says leachate is not a problem at the five landfill sites controlled by Pikitup in Johannesburg. ‘Our sites are classified as GLB-minus sites, meaning that evaporation levels in the region are higher than the rainfall.
‘Further control is ensured via special landfill linings. Water seeping from the landfill sites after rain is also diverted to special storage dams to ensure that no spillage takes place into underground water. Regular testing of groundwater is done via boreholes in and around our sites to ensure that no contamination is taking place.
‘We also monitor air quality continuously via air-monitoring stations at our landfill sites and in residential areas that are situated close to landfill sites.”
Once a landfill site is full, it is ‘rehabilitated by planting grass and trees on it, and in some cases it is made available for development by the community for active [sportsfields] or passive [parks] recreation,” says De Villiers.
A 2022 vision
The ideal would be to minimise, if not eliminate, the amount of waste dumped at landfill sites, which currently occupy a total of 250 hectares in the Johannesburg area. Space for depositing waste is becoming a matter of concern.
Christa Venter, Pikitup’s corporate strategy adviser, points out that ‘landfill site airspace depletion is a real threat to the city. It is becoming more and more difficult to find appropriate land for landfill site development. Waste minimisation projects, and the co-operation of the public, could in the future assist in eliminating this threat.”
In a 2002 newspaper article by Joy Russell entitled ‘Johannesburg plans to recycle garbage”, Venter predicted residents would see a marked shift in how they deal with garbage in the future. ‘Sorting will be done at source, with home bins having compartments for wet (food and vegetation) and dry (paper and glass) waste.
‘We need to create an awareness of what can be recycled and what can’t. The province will soon be calling for new ideas on how we design bins and how we separate waste on the street.”
The article also stated ‘experts believe that by the year 2022, the City of Johannesburg will have achieved a situation where 90% of its garbage is recycled – and the remainder used in landfill sites. The reverse is currently true: 90% of rubbish goes into the ground.
‘The plan is for South Africa to follow Denmark, which has an almost perfect recycling record. This would do much in terms of protecting the environment, conserving its natural resources, reducing the costs of dealing with waste, and in creating jobs.”
Commenting on the progress Pikitup has made in the past three years, Venter told Earthyear: ‘The vision and focus to have 90% of waste recycled by 2022 is still a reality and Pikitup’s waste minimisation efforts are guided by this vision.”
The plan is eventually to expand buy-back recycling centres to all Pikitup garden sites. ‘The very successful Dobsonville buy-back centre in Soweto has already indicated that, if well managed, recycling can be very productive and profitable,” she adds.
Spreading the mess(age)
Pikitup has a team of educators that is responsible for school education on waste minimisation and it has initiated community forums called Ecommunities. The company also takes part in Gauteng’s annual Bontle ke Botho competition, which rewards the cleanest towns and cities.
Venter is encouraged by recent developments in communities. ‘Recycling projects have already started to happen in some suburbs in the city as private initiatives. To me, this is an indication that our public is now much more aware than a few years ago of the need to start recycling and to play their part in preserving our planet and its scarce resources.”
Nthatise Modigoane, from the City of Johannesburg’s environmental planning and management division, says they are researching waste management strategies, methods and innovations by studying what other cities are doing, and by participating in international expos where information is freely exchanged.
‘Since 2000, the City of Johannesburg has signed sister city agreements with the City of Birmingham and the City of London in the United Kingdom, New York City in the United States and the City of Addis Ababa in Egypt. On our part, we seek to identify international best practice wherever it can be found and adapt it to our own specific reality.”
Modigoane points out that last year the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management recognised Pikitup’s efforts by awarding its ‘100 Spots” project a silver medal for innovation. Since 2002 the project has made considerable inroads in eradicating illegal dumping in Johannesburg’s neighbourhoods.