Wasting the Nation.indd - Groundwork

Chapter 3: The politics of wasteLivaningo has since re-formed as Justicia Ambiental and remains at the centre ofMozambique’s environmental debate as well as the network of southern Africanenvironmental justice organisations.In South Africa, over 300 incinerators were operating by 1997. Most are used formedical waste but some are operating on industrial sites. Most have no emissionscontrols whatever and operate with minimal regulatory oversight. On the DEAT’s ownaccount, “many … failed to comply with the required emission standards for humanhealth and environmental protection” [DEAT 2006: 254]. However, the departmenttook action only when pressured to do so. The Aloes incinerator was temporarilyclosed in 1998. In south Durban, the department ordered EnviroServ to close itsIsipingo incinerator following repeated demands from SDCEA and a groundWorkinvestigation that showed it had been allowed to transgress its permit conditionsfor years. The DEAT noted that the corporation had consistently showed “a lack ofcommitment” to compliance with environmental and health standards. 45At Ixopo, the largest medical waste incinerator in the country was exemplary of a badlyrun plant. It was owned by the local municipality and operated by Compass Wasteunder a permit from the DEAT. It burnt a mix of local municipal waste and medicalwaste brought in by Compass from across the province of KwaZulu-Natal. For themost part, the municipality failed to deliver its share of waste but escaped penaltiesbecause Compass had ever more medical waste to burn more profitably.Combustion was so ‘incomplete’ that identifiable items of medical waste were visiblein the bottom ash which was itself illegally dumped in a hole on site. Black smokewas regularly emitted from the chimney along with half-burned paper. The door tothe burn chamber was left open so that a worker could stir the burning waste with apoker. The plant itself was in such disrepair that bits were falling down. Meanwhile,the municipality was using adjacent land for new housing and a shack settlement wasalso expanding next to the plant.Starting in 1999, groundWork fought for six years to get the authorities to enforcethe conditions imposed in their own permit or close the plant. In 2002, it took themunicipality, Compass and the DEAT to court. The court ordered an ‘appeals hearing’which the DEAT failed to act on. In the next three years, the municipality and Compass45 Quoted in KZN incinerator closed down, groundWork Newsletter, Vol.2, No.3, September 2000.Wasting the Nation - groundWork - 63 -