My doorbell rang last week. They had come to collect the garbage. I trundled out one of those plastic bins with lid and wheels that are omnipresent across Johannesburg. It was full to brimming.
But this was no ordinary bin. Blue with a green lid, it belongs to Resolution Recycling, which, for R30 a month, takes away your recyclables through a twice-a-month collection service.
Our household has for the past few weeks being sorting our waste according to a list supplied by the company. We put this waste, which is most of what we produce, in a special green/blue bin for the twice-monthly collection.
I have been both impressed and surprised by just how much waste is recyclable. Resolution Recycling’s list includes plastic bottles and bags, food containers, cosmetic containers, office paper, cardboard, magazines, newspapers, phone books, cans, tins, aluminum cans and foil, bottles and jars, ink cartridges, toners and batteries.
The list of what cannot be recycled is in fact shorter than what can be. This includes hard plastic, sticky tape, chip packets, toilet paper, tissues, waxed cardboard, petrol cans, light bulbs, ceramic dishes, mirrors and leaking batteries.
Resolution Recycling, which has 1 000 customers, makes its money by selling the recyclables to be reused, said founder Justin Needham. A start-up that is only nine months old, the company already employs 22 full-time and 35 part-time staff, Needham told the Mail & Guardian during a recent interview.
We are still not entirely sure about where to put what waste as we familiarise ourselves with this new process, but our household sent about two-thirds of our waste for recycling. We will soon be living in a house with a garden and so can once again turn vegetable scraps and the like into compost, so I reckon that we should soon have reduced our waste output by 90% with hardly any effort at all. No careful sorting and no driving individual items to special collection points, glass here, plastic and cardboard there.
In the meantime I have read on the Pikitup website that the refuse giant aims to reduce waste in the city by 90% by 2022. It currently collects 1,4-million tons of waste annually from 3,2-million citizens and 17 000 businesses. Waste generation is up by 200 000 tonnes since 2000.
On the face of it, based on my experience, Pikitup could outsource its entire operation to Resolution Recycling and achieve the 90% target almost overnight.
It is probably worth stating some of the obvious benefits of producing less waste. Recycling means lower energy costs and lower input costs for the economy. Recycling offers job and income opportunities, especially to people lacking skills. It potentially also reduces the need for imports and the cost of waste removal and disposal. Landfill sites cost money both to develop and operate and are a source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Recycling in Jo’burg ranges from about 5% of all material brought to its garden sites to 60% in the case of Parkmore where an entrepreneur collects directly from householders.
The manager of special projects at Pikitup, Christa Venter, said that Pikitup supports a range of recycling operations. She said that 80% of all used cans are collected for recycling, but the average collection for initiatives such as in glass, plastic and paper is 20%.
But perhaps Cape Town is showing Jo’burg the way ahead. This city has been running its own recycling experiment for the past month, using five areas chosen as a mix of affluent and poor areas. Residents are given both black and clear bags. Wet refuse is put in the black bag, dry in the clear bag, in this free service.
Clive Justus, a city councillor, explains that the intention is not to try to exclude people who earn income from scavenging from the chain. By simply holding up the clear bag they can see if it contains items of value and extract these without causing any litter.
Companies contracted to remove refuse collect the bags, taking the clear bags away to recycling depots. Within a month the amount of waste going to landfills has been reduced by 50%.
Justus said that the new collection policy does require residents to be educated on the new regime, but said that few problems have been encountered. “One was that we did not give out enough clear bags.”
He expects lower separation rates in poor areas but said most waste is produced by the affluent. “Twenty percent produce 80% of the waste.”
Pikitup has found a similar pattern by analysing waste in three Jo’burg areas, low, middle and high income. Venter said recyclables made up just 30% of waste in the low-income areas, 50% in the middle-income and 70% in the high-income areas.
The intention in Cape Town, depending on the success of the pilot, is to roll out the operation to the entire city within the next six to nine months.
Justus said the city has five landfill sites, three of which are fast filling up and will have to be replaced if refuse disposal operations continue. The key benefit of the new system is that it will delay the building of more expensive landfill sites.