Speech

Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism

Program Director
Honourable Ministers and Deputy Ministers
Honorouble Members of the Portfolio and Select Committees
Honourable Mayors and Councillors
Distinguished guests and participants

It is a great pleasure to speak at this conference and to address a subject which is not often spoken about, but which has a fundamental impact on the quality of life of our communities.  

Across the length and breadth of our country, I have witnessed the consequences of absent or inadequate waste management. It results in health hazards, pollution of the environment, and is often the root cause of damage to municipal infrastructure such as storm water and road systems.  It is experienced as a serious problem and in the public mind is the most visible effect of bad environmental management.

It is a sad fact that almost 40% of our population, largely in rural areas and informal settlements do not have access to waste collection services. And it is a problem that requires a focused and coherent strategy designed to ensure that all our people have access to domestic waste collection services and that municipalities have both the resources and capacity to guarantee this.

These issues I am told have been discussed at length in the first day of this conference.   I would like to focus on the waste management challenge from the perspective of solutions, and in particular solutions that can assist in releasing funds from municipal budgets, building our economy, create jobs and contribute to the achievement of our empowerment goals.  

As is the case elsewhere in the world, economic growth and increases in personal wealth are accompanied by an increase in the amount of waste generated.  The challenge here is to manage this problem so that the waste stream is managed in such a way that it is first of all avoided, secondly, reduced and thirdly recycled.  Disposal of waste to landfill should ideally be a measure of last resort.

Such an approach located waste management as a central element of economic strategies, technology choices and industrial policy.   It implies that in establishing any business, attention is paid from the beginning to technology choices that will result in less waste being generated; it implies that the waste that is produced is assessed with a view to establishing whether it has any value as a resource that can be recovered and in turn fed into other industrial processes, and it thus sees waste products as a potential revenue stream.

In the municipal waste context, such an approach would mean an upfront investment in collection systems and public education that would allow recyclable materials to be easily recovered from the waste stream. This would then allow municipalities to sell these recyclables and not only cover the costs of their additional investment, but also generate a revenue stream that would allow funds that are at present literally thrown away, to be used for productive purposes.   This avoided expenditure can be significant if one takes into account that the cost of a new disposal site can run into hundreds of millions of rends, and that increased longevity of existing sites, would result in a substantial saving on the municipal budget over time. 

I am sure we all agree that these scenarios would clearly enhance the environmental sustainability of our economic growth and are preferable to what we have at the moment.  On this basis let us look at what we as a nation would need to do to make it real.

In the first place we would need to consider using market incentives, both in the first and second economies, to influence production and consumption patterns towards sustainability.  Investments in clean technology and separation of waste materials at source in the domestic context are key imperatives. 

Secondly, we would need to create strong partnerships between the public and private sectors for an integrated approach to waste management.  Here, I would like to note the fact that we in South Africa already have a robust recycling industry that has consistently indicated it willingness and desire to work with government to ensure that waste materials are reused. 

In particular I would like to note the sterling work done by organizations such as Collect-a-Can, the Glass Recycling Company, and the PET, paper and plastics industries in establishing both infrastructure and systems for recycling.  We also note the fact that these organizations have explicitly committed themselves to both job and enterprise creation in the way they do their work.  We note the positive achievements thus far, and challenge them to work with government to enhance their achievements and to take their efforts to a new level by putting in place the mechanisms that would ensure that the SMME’s and jobs created are sustainable into the long term. 

The growing environmental goods and services sector, an in particular the emergence of new companies focused on waste management at a range of levels is a national resource that has the potential for substantial growth and in that for new employment and new business opportunities in a growing environmental goods and services sector.

I would like to spend a few minutes to look at this sector and its role players in order that we can identify the growth potential and contribution to economic development in this sector. And here I refer to municipal infrastructure itself, the waste collection and transport industry, the waste treatment industry as well as those who run disposal facilities, recycle waste as well as consultancy industry and suppliers.

Currently our waste management sector is dominated by a few large enterprises with national and even international operations.  These companies tend to be largely white owned.  In general the sector is untransformed, although there in recently there has been certain transformation efforts in response to government procurement policies.

Secondly, there is a growing number of community-based enterprises involved in recycling activities through their linkages to waste collection services and the operation of buy-back centres. These enterprises must be encouraged and strengthened.  In doing so we should however take care that we ensure that these enterprises are supported so that they collect their waste resource in a way that is safe and that does not pose a threat to human health.  In particular, where collection of recyclables is taking place through scavenging on landfill sites, we must take steps to ensure that this is stopped and that safe and healthy infrastructure is provided. 

A significant barrier to the entry of new businesses into the waste sector is posed by the fact that the sector is by and large capital intensive at present.  This poses a significant barrier to entry, particularly for small businesses.   It is clear that means must be devised to open up this sector to small and black businesses and I would like to take this opportunity to challenge the established waste management sector to move with all speed to devise a transformation and empowerment strategy that would bring the sector into line with other sectors that have developed BBEE Charters.

Finally, we should note that some activities in the sector, in particular, waste treatment, remediation of contamination and consulting, require highly specialized technical skills. At present these skills lie in predominantly white and often male hands.  There is significant opportunity for active interventions to bring young black people and women into the sector and to build a national technical capacity that would in itself contribute substantively to a transformation agenda.

Finally, I would like to conclude by identifying some of the potential second economy interventions that could assist the waste sector in claiming its place a sector that can make a positive contribution to our shared growth agenda.

Our Expanded Public Works Programme has a waste management component. In this regard, the Department of Public Works, in partnership with the Business Trust is planning to pilot a number of waste management initiatives in municipalities around the country.  These and other similar interventions are designed to address waste service delivery backlogs, ensure infrastructure maintenance and development and provide sustainable employment through community based waste collection and recycling cooperatives.
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Many municipalities around the country sub-contract their waste collection services. This offers the possibility of fostering small and micro enterprise development and support through preferential procurement and market development.  In particular, public private partnerships and support for emergent contractors, through joint ventures could be widely established.  In addition, in areas where local conditions are not conducive to capital-intensive methods of waste disposal, community based systems could also be established.

Finally, I would like to conclude by noting the fact that the far reaching transformation of the waste management sector that I am proposing, must be underpinned by a significant increase in public understanding of our approach to waste minimization and waste management.   This is a challenge to be taken on actively by this audience and the constituencies it represents. 

I would like to know that in a few years, anyone in South Africa who throws a piece of paper into the street, would be looked at with disapproval by passers by, and would be fined by municipal police.  I would like to know that each school child would know from the time they first go to school that litter must be disposed of in litter bins and I would hope that by that stage, we would all be reducing, reusing and recycling our waste.

I thank you.

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