Wasting the Nation

200 Pages·2008·1.32 MB·English

Wasting the Nation
making trash of people and places
Wasting the Nation
the groundWork Report 2008
The groundWork Report 2008
Wasting the Nation
Making trash of people and places
Written by David Hallowes and Victor Munnik
November 2008
ISBN 978-0-620-42714-2
Published by groundWork
P O Box 2375, Pietermaritzburg, 3200, South Africa
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
e-mail: [email protected]
Web: www.groundwork.org.za
Cover Credit:
Pickers rush for waste at Boitshepi dump, Vanderbijlpark, Emfuleni.
Photo by Victor Munnik
Foreword
Foreword
In my two decades of working on waste issues around the world, I’ve read hundreds of
reports by credentialed “experts” who approached waste primarily as a technical problem
and presented a range of technical solutions. I am happy to say that groundWork’s
latest report, Wasting the Nation, is a much needed break from that limited line of
discussion.
Waste is not an isolated technical problem but is a symptom, a physical manifestation,
of much deeper problems with the current economic, political and social systems.
Waste is the visible face of a development model built on the assumption that some
people matter more than others, that pollution is the inevitable price of progress and
blind economic growth is the highest possible good.
Until we see waste through a broader systems lens our interventions are at best limited,
and are often worse, perpetuating the environmental health and social problems which
motivate our interventions in the first place.
If one looks at a pile of municipal waste as an isolated problem and asks “what can be
done with this waste?” there are no solutions. The line of enquiry is self-limited. We
can bury it in a big hole in the ground. We can burn it in an incinerator, which creates
even more toxic by-products. Or we can dump it on someone else’s land, usually
someone perceived to be less powerful than we. None of those approaches solve the
problem, and all perpetuate the disregard for the planet and communities which lead
to the waste creation in the first place.
Yet, if we take a step back, if we look at the larger system, we can see that the waste
is, in fact, not all waste. Much of it is resources in the wrong place: paper, cardboard,
glass, metals, nutrient-rich organic waste, durable goods which could be repaired. By
broadening our enquiry to include the local communities which survive by recovering
valuable materials from the discards, and the local remanufacturing facilities which
can repair or recycle these resources, more solutions become available. Unfortunately,
around the world, municipal waste planners tend to have a collective blind spot about
the scores of people who work every day, exposed to health risks, social scorn and
police harassment, to recover the valuable materials that were discarded as waste. These
informal recyclers are immensely knowledgeable about local materials flows and provide
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Foreword
a valuable service to the planet and to the municipality; they should be celebrated and
supported, not scorned and excluded from the official waste planning processes.
The failure to recognise, validate and support the people in this informal recycling
sector – often called ragpickers – leads to short term techno-fixes, such as landfills and
incinerators, which not only encourage continued material wasting, but also waste
entire communities which survived through small scale recycling. Incinerators and
landfills lock up valuable resources in inherently destructive technologies, decimating
the informal recycling economy and driving the demand to extract, mine, harvest, and
process ever more resources from the earth – thus fueling the cycle of destruction.
And if we take another step back in our systems view, we can see that even the most
skilled ragpickers cannot recover certain discards because they have been designed
not to be recyclable or they contain too many toxics to be safely handled and re-used.
The problem here lies not in the piles of waste, but in the corporate headquarters
and design labs which reward product designers for making products containing
toxic materials which are designed to break soon after purchase. The problem lies in
our elected officials and regulatory agencies who grant permission for corporations
to routinely use toxic compounds known to cause cancer, neurological problems,
reproductive disorders and other health threats. Toxics used in production inevitably
lead to toxics in our environment, our communities and our waste. We’ll never find
a solution to our waste problem within a regulatory system which permits the use of
inherently toxic compounds in the products we bring into our homes, schools and
workplaces every day.
And if we take one final step back, as Wasting the Nation does, we see that a truly
transformative solution depends not just on supporting informal recyclers and
redesigning products to be more durable and less toxic, but in rejecting an entire
economic system which values unlimited economic growth and capital accumulation
over public health, ecological integrity and community well being. It is through
challenging and replacing this underlying system with one that respects ecological
limits, nurtures public health, and fiercely promotes social justice that we’ll finally stop
wasting both the planet and its people.
Annie Leonard
Annie Leonard is an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, with more than
20 years of experience investigating factories and dumps around the world. Annie communicates worldwide
about the impact of consumerism and materialism on global economies and international health. She is
the co-founder of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives which was launched in Johannesburg in
November 2000.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the many people who gave their time to help with the making of this
report. In particular, we are indebted to the waste pickers and site cleaners who took
the time to speak to us when we visited landfills and dumps in KwaZulu-Natal and
the Vaal Triangle in May this year. They make a living in hard conditions and some
feel vulnerable to recrimination from employers or the authorities and did not wish
to be named. Those who spoke to us include: Caroline Dlamini, Ntoko Madondo,
Douglas Maphumelo, Siyabonga Mbanjwa, Thokozile Mbatha, Dumisani Zondi
from Pietermaritzburg; Sylvia Chelwane, Mantwa Mokoena, Pulane Ralephanyane
and Mmateboho Sekhoto who are on the committee elected by waste pickers at the
Boitshepi dump in Vanderbijlpark; and Themba Khosa at Palm Springs, Sebokeng.
There are several hundred people working through the waste on the Vaal Triangle
dumps and large groups gathered to talk to us at Palm Springs and Sasolburg. We are
grateful for the many insights offered by people within those groups.
Local residents, workers and activists also shared their experience and analysis with us. In
KwaZulu-Natal we spoke with S’bu Zikode of Abahlali baseMjondolo; Arun Edwards
and Roshan Autar of the Clare Estates Ratepayers Association; Busi Mbokazi from the
Sobantu Environmental Committee, Councillor Ngubane and Andries Radebe from
Sobantu; and shopstewards Innocent Mhlongu, Patrick Mbhele and Jabu Ncobo of
the South African Municipal Workers Union in Pietermaritzburg. Members of the
Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance helped organise and accompanied our site visits
in the Vaal Triangle. Particular thanks to: Samson Mokoena, Moleleki Fantisi, Themba
Mjikane, Matshediso Tsotetsi-Dlamini and Caroline Ntaopane. Patrick Sindane and
other comrades from the Anti-Privatisation Forum and the Water Coalition introduced
us to the residents of Zone 20, Sebokeng. We were also joined by members of the Vaal
Ethical Investment Forum and the South African Council of Churches in the Vaal
Triangle. Sas and Douw Coetzee from the Wonderfonteinspruit valley talked to us
about their experience of mining waste, as did people in the Brugspruit Valley and
Maguqa, Emalahleni (Witbank). In Durban, we also spoke to Messrs Babs, Basha and
Ali and Firoz Kader who own and manage local recycling businesses.
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Acknowledgements
Local solid waste managers and officials who gave us time include: John Parkins
and Logan Moodley of eThekwini, Riaz Jogiat of Mgungundlovu, Cyril Naidoo of
Msunduzi, Oupa Loate and Theunis Redelinghuys of Emfuleni, and Gerard Crouse
of Sasolburg. Particular thanks to Oupa for showing us around Emfuleni’s waste sites.
Waste consultant and former DWAF regulator Caren Bosman shared her observations
on some of the problem sites in the Vaal.
We enjoyed extended conversations with Chris Albertyn, Dee Fischer, Jenny Hall,
Peter Lukey and Bobby Peek on the history of struggles around waste and on policy
issues and got a view on the beginnings of global organising by waste pickers from
Chris Bonner and Melanie Samson.
Thanks to the team at groundWork who were, as always, a pleasure to work with
and have fed us information and commented on drafts. Particular thanks to Musa
Chamane who organised the KwaZulu-Natal field visits and to Jane Harley for her
support in editing the final text.
Melanie Samson has written a separate report for groundWork specifically focused on
waste reclaimers. Musa and Melanie accompanied us for the field research and we were
joined by Bobby for parts of the trip as well. They shared insights with us over many
conversations along the way and greatly enriched the experience. Neither they nor any
of the other people we spoke to are responsible for our mistakes or our interpretation
of the information that they shared.
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Contents
Contents
Chapter 1: Dust and ashes ................................................................................9
Sea trash .....................................................................................................12
Dumping on the poor ................................................................................14
Waste and war on the poor ........................................................................18
Chapter 2: Rubbish figures .............................................................................23
Hazardous waste ........................................................................................24
General waste ............................................................................................27
Chapter 3: The politics of waste ......................................................................33
Politicising waste ........................................................................................34
Poison dumps .......................................................................................41
Toxic waste trade ..................................................................................45
Connepp: policy opening ...........................................................................49
Closing down .......................................................................................51
Polokwane’s zero waste puzzle ...............................................................52
The burn ..............................................................................................60
Gear shift ...................................................................................................68
The Waste Bill: law of deferral ....................................................................70
Waste struggles codified .......................................................................72
The definition of waste ...................................................................72
The Waste Hierarchy ......................................................................73
Incineration ..................................................................................74
Toxic trading .................................................................................75
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Contents
Mining waste .................................................................................76
Salvagers ........................................................................................76
Enforcement ..................................................................................77
Contaminated land ........................................................................77
Chapter 4: The toxic cradle of production .......................................................79
Making and wasting ...................................................................................79
Paint it green ........................................................................................81
Conspicuous consumption ...................................................................87
The sacrifice to mining ...............................................................................88
Abandoned mines .................................................................................90
Laying waste to water ...........................................................................91
Platinum: more precious than people ....................................................96
Steeling the future ......................................................................................98
Chemicals and plastic ...............................................................................103
The plastics industry ...........................................................................108
Plastic and packaging ..........................................................................113
Aluminium ...............................................................................................119
Cement kilns ............................................................................................122
Chapter 5: Modernising Municipal Waste .....................................................127
Inside the municipal waste stream .............................................................127
Creating waste bodies .........................................................................130
The Minimum Requirements for Sanitary Landfills ............................133
Chapter 6: Down at the dumps .....................................................................137
eThekwini .................................................................................................138
Bisasar Road .......................................................................................139
The calculus of cost ......................................................................139
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Contents
CDM and local struggles ....................................................................144
The smell from Clare Estate ........................................................144
Kennedy Road ............................................................................146
Rival authority: uMgungundlovu and Msunduzi .....................................151
New England Road ............................................................................153
Sobantu ......................................................................................156
Waste pickers ..............................................................................157
The Vaal Triangle .....................................................................................158
Illegal dumping in Sebokeng .............................................................161
Boitshepi ...........................................................................................162
Palm Springs ......................................................................................165
Muscling in on the pickings at Sasolburg ...........................................167
Under neo-liberal orders ..........................................................................172
Privatising … ......................................................................................174
… labour ....................................................................................174
… skills .......................................................................................175
… landfills ..................................................................................176
… ‘green’ ....................................................................................176
Chapter 7: The question of the future ..........................................................179
Greening and the city ..............................................................................183
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