I drive through Braamfontein with a photographer looking for someone dragging a supermarket trolley loaded with scrap cardboard or plastic. I want to chat to one of these lonely figures — who really account for South Africa’s record as one of the top waste recyclers.
We see a man of medium build relentlessly pulling a heavy flatbed piled high with grey bags along the pedestrian strip of the Nelson Mandela Bridge. Bundled up against the weather, with a tracksuit hood pulled over his baseball cap, Ronnie Seokotsa (40) is moving waste paper collected from rubbish bins for sale to a middleman, who in turn will sell it on to the big reprocessors, such as Sappi.
His destination is the Remade depot in Newtown. It is 9.30am and he has been up since 6am, rummaging through bins in Braamfontein.
‘All I want is money,†says Seokotsa, whose neck veins are sticking out from the effort. He stops a few metres from the Remade entrance, clearly exhausted, and begins to sort the different types of paper methodically into piles, removing the odd plastic item. One pile is for ‘heavy letter†(standard bond paper), one for ‘common mixed wasteâ€. He then sits on one of the piles, catching his breath.
Around him, other professional scavengers are arriving with the scrap materials that will fill their bellies today. Most push supermarket trolleys, carrying loads often bigger and heavier than they are.
Seokotsa recycles everything of any value he can lay hands on — paper, plastic, cardboard, metal. ‘But paper is where you get the most money,†he explains.
The reigning prices for recyclable paper and cardboard at Remade are 45c per kilo for cardboard, 30c for ‘common mixed waste†with bond paper at a clear premium, at R1,30 a kilo.
Other prices are 80c a kilo for ‘mixed†plastic in different colours, R1 per kilo for two-litre cold drink bottles and R1 a kilo for clear plastic. Remade does not take scrap metal.
‘Sometimes the price goes up, sometimes down,†Seokotsa shrugs philosophically.
He spends his whole working life on his feet, criss-crossing the city with his flatbed in tow. ‘I go to collect in Rosebank and Parkhurst on Monday; Tuesday it’s Newtown, Brixton or Braamfontein; Wednesday, Melville; and Thursday, Mayfield,†he says.
Parkhurst is the longest haul; he sets out 5.30am to get there and it takes him two hours to get back to Newtown pulling his load. On Mondays, he walks to Rosebank, his major paper source.
The sorting over, he joins the queue for his load to be weighed. He places his bags on a large weighing platform; today, he has 22kg of bond, worth R28,60, and 11kg of mixed waste, worth R3,30.
As the city’s waste has now been picked clean, that’s it for the day. It is a pittance, but he is used to it and seems unfazed. ‘It’s a hard life, but if you don’t go out you don’t eat.†He would welcome a waste pickers’ union like those formed in Brazil and India.
Seokotsa hails from Mafikeng, but says he now lives in Braamfontein. He names a block of flats, but I suspect he is homeless. He previously worked as a storeman in Krugersdorp, but the company closed. ‘I started recycling in 2005; it’s the only way for me to make money.â€
Seokotsa harbours no resentment against the company or the prices it offers — in fact, he sees himself as one of its regular suppliers. ‘The treatment’s OK. Without the collecting, there’s no business for them,†he argues.
I ask him if he ever fights with other waste pickers over waste. But the industry has its protocols: the waste belongs to whoever gets there first. He is clearly envious of waste pickers who have sewn up a particular building and the waste it produces by reaching an understanding with cleaners or other employees.
In the Remade courtyard a husband and wife team is sorting every imaginable type of waste material from a mammoth, swollen bag. Motlatse and Bontle Mokgoetsi from Orange Farm, 28 and 24 respectively, have been scavenging for a living for six years.
They have just got back from Fordsburg, where they live and where they say they find their biggest paper troves. They support a seven-year-old child who continues to live in Orange Farm, looked after by his grandmother.
Rosebank is as far afield as they go. ‘We leave at 7am and get back by 9am,†says Bontle, who explains that they also work on Saturdays if they need money.
Bontle, in a dirty tracksuit with dishevelled hair, hopes to find another job. Picking through her takings, she finds discarded elastic bands for her hair and some cheap jewellery, which she happily pockets.
The Mokgoetsi are not so happy with Remade. ‘They don’t know how to treat people,†says Bontle of the depot management. ‘They treat you like you’re nothing.â€
The couple fills three large bags with plastic, cold drink and milk bottles and paper. As Bontle talks, she removes the bottle lids, which Remade doesn’t want, checking them for competition lucky numbers.
Today they earn R124, and seem content. At 5pm they plan to go out again in search of boxes discarded by businesses during the day. Normally, they earn between R400 and R500 a week.
Pulling his flatbed, Seokotsa sets out for Braamfontein and home. ‘For that load it’s OK,†he says, flashing a smile: ‘This afternoon I’m going to relax.â€
Extreme recycling: a First World approach
A R570 fine? For not removing the label from a mayonnaise bottle? My jaw dropped.
This was Zurich, Switzerland, which in extreme form exemplifies the growing First World crackdown on wasteful rubbish disposal.
In Switzerland, Andy Warhol commented approvingly, ‘everyone is richâ€. So it cannot rely on waste pickers to recycle its waste materials; the consuming public — under the threat of heavy official sanctions — must do the work. This may smack of enviro-fascism, but in an age of dwindling natural resources, it may be the wave of the future.
Swiss households must buy 10 official municipal bags at a total cost of Ch25 (R120) where glass, paper and plastic must be separately deposited, and no other bag is accepted. These are then emptied into bins stationed every few blocks.
In fairness, my sin was not just dropping the mayonnaise bottle into the glass bin with its label still attached (the label must be removed and placed in the bin for paper). I was also guilty of dropping an envelope in the bin meant for plastic.
That Friday the doorbell rang and two waste collectors, holding the grubby envelope and the bottle, greeted me. I can only assume they had rummaged through the trash in a systematic quest for anomalies. A week later the Ch100 fine they promised arrived in my postbox.
One consequence of this regime is that Zurich is pristine. But it is hard for a South African to adjust to such a rule-bound and highly policed society. Swiss youth appear to feel the same way — Zurich has one of the highest number of drugs users in Europe. The state distributes needles to heroin addicts to stem the spread of HIV/Aids.
Oddly, given its progressive social institutions, full-time working women are a relative rarity in Zurich. Perhaps it is because scratching labels off bottles is a full-time occupation. — Vicki Robinson