The recent Zero Waste to Zero Emissions report published by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) made use of grassroots-level research in several cities across the world to compile data for their research.
In Durban, researchers found that the city has the potential to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 63% if the proper sustainable waste strategies are implemented across the board.
Using key statistics from 2017, researchers found that eThekwini municipality generated 1 368 480 tonnes of waste per year, and with a population of 3 947 020 people, this equates to around a kilo of waste per person per day.
Researchers found that as many as 12% of households in Durban, the majority of which are situated in rural and informal housing settlements, do not receive official waste disposal or collection services.
The municipality relies heavily on the informal waste-picking sector for recyclable waste recovery as household separation and curbside pick-up are negligible.
Conservative estimates of combined official and unofficial recovery rates of recyclable materials suggest an overall rate of just 10%, with most of the remaining unseparated waste being sent to landfill.
Unofficial observations from experts in the area suggest that much higher recovery rates exist for recyclables such as PET bottles, paper, aluminium cans, scrap metal and cardboard through the informal waste-picking sector.
Despite this, the National Waste Picker Integration guidelines published by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment in 2020 have yet to be implemented by the municipality, and informal waste workers still go unrecognised and unsupported.
According to the 2016 Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan, the municipality had set a goal of increasing the number of recovered recyclables by 10% each year, but with no official programs in place, it is unlikely to achieve that goal.
The report found that the municipality has a genuine opportunity to take advantage of emissions reductions borne from the sustainable management of organic waste. With food and garden waste making up 43% of the combined domestic and commercial waste stream, this will also decrease the load on its increasingly expensive landfills.
Integration and support for waste pickers allow for better tracking and execution of material recovery, particularly for easier-to-recycle materials such as paper and cardboard.
This coupled with a separate collection of food and garden waste could reduce its waste sector greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 63%, the equivalent of preventing 750 000 tonnes of coal from being burned.
Plans in the city’s recently published Climate Action Plan to reduce the amount of good quality leftover food waste by 80% would generate additional GHG emissions savings.
Based on the conducted research, GAIA offered recommendations to the city on how it can work towards achieving its targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Organics, which constitute 43% of the waste stream and are responsible for a large proportion of the municipality’s baseline greenhouse gas emissions, should be separately collected and diverted from landfill to composting and/or anaerobic digestion, either at community-scale sites such as garden compost piles, or larger facilities depending on local community needs and resources.
Recyclables should be managed through improved integration of the existing informal recycling system that already recovers significant amounts of paper, cardboard, and plastic that never enter the waste stream and are not captured by current data.
The municipality should draw on the expertise of waste pickers to manage the most appropriate material recovery strategies for each neighbourhood, including buy-back centres, door-to-door collection, and material recovery facilities.
Single-use plastic should be banned in order to reduce the amount of difficult-to-recycle materials in the waste stream that can only go to landfill.
Current Affairs