The Green-up Project is an innovative partnership between the City’s Solid Waste Management Department, Distell, Nedbank, Waste Plan and the Makhaza community in Khayelitsha that has turned collecting recyclables into a sustainable business for participating residents while helping to keep the area clean.
This programme, based in Makhaza, Khayelitsha, initially started in 2018 with 47 women and has developed and grown into a sustainable business.
The City’s role in the project was mainly to provide and facilitate training to the waste collectors on identifying items of value, and the general importance of recycling. Nedbank also assisted by providing a day’s finance management training. The City of Cape Town also provided skips to contain waste before selling to buy-back centres.
To date, more than 57 000 kilograms of recyclables have been collected and sold to the Buy- Back Centre, generating an income for residents.
How does this work?
Reclaimers, ie residents in the community who collect recyclable waste, are scheduled to work five days a week. On collection days they sort through refuse that has been placed out for collection and set aside items that can be recycled.
They are equipped with 47 trolleys, scales to weigh the items on site and recycling bags. They have also received a bakkie from Waste Plan (a waste management and recycling service) to assist in their efforts to reduce waste in the recycling industry.
The collected recyclables are then sorted and stored on site, in three six-metre-long containers, provided by the City.
The waste is sold to the Buy Back Centre(BBC) in exchange for income.
Project with purpose
‘The objective of this project is to encourage communities to divert and separate waste at the source. This project is intended to create an enabling environment that can add value between communities, stakeholders and businesses.
‘This exciting project demonstrates how the City and communities can make progress possible, together. It innovatively addresses key challenges of unemployment, and illegal dumping/environmental health.
‘The 2020 National Waste Management Strategy for South Africa (NWMS) places a strong focus on informal collectors of recyclable waste, officially known as “waste pickers”. The Strategy tasks metros with initiating an integration programme and calls upon the packaging industry to implement schemes to integrate waste pickers, as set out in the Extended Producer Responsibility regulations gazetted in November last year. The Regulations set out explicit requirements for producers to integrate waste pickers into post-consumer collection value chain with serious consequences for those who fail to comply, including fines, imprisonment and/or loss of registration with the Department as per the regulations. Producers are required to co-operate with municipalities to increase the recovery of recyclables from municipal waste within three years of implementation of their extended producer responsibility scheme.
‘This project represents a promising example of how the new strategy can work and benefit our communities through job creation and improved environmental health,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Water and Waste, Councillor Zahid Badroodien.
Source: City Of Cape Town