Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 6: Down at the dumpsminimum requirements landfill there. At the moment, it is a dump on an old quarryrun at minimal cost. It receives 13,200 m 3 per year. Emfuleni has declared a ‘backlog’of between 73,000 and 100,000 m 3 of illegally dumped waste – although none of itswaste disposal is exactly legal.A new landfill site is being sought “west of ArcelorMittal Vanderbijlpark”, according toEmfuleni Solid Waste manager Theunis Redelinghuys. This could mean Steel Valley,which would be consistent with locating landfills at already contaminated ‘brown field’sites. Siting a landfill in Steel Valley would not only add insult to injury, but wouldalso mask the original pollution from the steel mill.The history of careless and profligate waste production combined with the gross neglectof waste management in South Africa flows into the present regime with its slow,inefficient and under resourced process of improving waste management. The resultsare clearly visible in Emfuleni. The first result is the continued and compromisedoperation of landfill sites. While on paper they may be illegal, in practice they areoperated by the local authority and overseen by regulatory authorities. This semi-legalstatus is just one face of the greyness of waste and the shiftiness of definitions withinthe broader regime of negotiated non-compliance. The legacy costs incurred throughdecades of neglect are huge. The present waste management system is not only unableto deal with them but is adding to them.Emfuleni’s planning ignores reduction at source and the waste managers must dealwith what comes at them. As elsewhere, waste is a low priority and under funded.This leads to substandard operations and leaves managers to ‘make a plan’. The PalmSprings dump is a good example. Here the waste pickers far outnumber the municipalteam and Emfuleni’s landfill manager, Oupa Loate, responded by incorporating theminto his management regime. In Sasolburg, the reclaimers are practically in charge ofthe dump although they have been stripped of control over marketing recyclables. InEmfuleni, Redelinghuys estimates that just 5% of the waste stream is recycled. Theonly formal example is the Evaton recycling centre where the IDP says nine permanentjobs have been created.- 160 - groundWork - Wasting the Nation