Johannesburg — EFFECTIVE waste management can create jobs, generate electricity and provide valuable resources for economic growth. But although consumers are becoming more interested in recycling initiatives, SA still has a lot of work to do.

According to the Department of Environmental Affairs, urban households produce about 15-million tons of waste a year, and industry produces another 25-million tons.

Johannesburg's own waste collection company, Pikitup, wants 80% of the city's waste to be recycled, diverting valuable resources away from landfill sites. As incomes rise and urbanisation continues, the amount of waste produced is likely to grow - while available landfill sites are running out of capacity.

Pikitup has four landfill sites and at the present rate of disposal, the Ennerdale landfill site will be full in 12 years, Goudkoppies has nine years remaining, Marie Louise has seven and Robinson Deep has just three, the company says.

It started a "separation at source" pilot project last year, aimed at getting households to separate potentially recyclable waste from their nonrecyclable waste.

Prior to the start of this campaign, just 4% of Johannesburg households separated their waste, Pikitup says.

Cape Town and eThekwini have also started similar pilot projects.

The City of Cape Town estimates that waste generation is growing at 7% a year, outstripping the city's population growth of 1,7%.

In the 2007 financial year, 14% of waste was "diverted" from landfill sites for reuse or recycling.

Ray Lombard, chairman of the National Recycling Forum - which represents companies such as Sappi, Mondi and recycling associations - says SA has a thriving recycling industry. The Collect-A-Can initiative has resulted in 67% of all tin cans being recovered, he says. "All of this is without the help of incentives or legislation, and is purely based on the economics," he says.

Mr Lombard says recycling can help companies be more efficient while reducing their carbon footprints. For example, recycling paper requires only 30% of the energy required to produce paper from raw materials, he says.

Prices for recyclable materials are volatile and differ from region to region, according to the logistics, Mr Lombard says, as the collected waste has to be transported to suitable recycling facilities.

But Jalda Hodges, of Reliable Recycling, a Johannesburg-based company that collects recyclable waste, mainly from companies, says that although there is greater interest from consumers, they lack commitment. Ms Hodges' company has been operating for three years and sells the collected waste to buy-back companies which, in turn, sell the waste to companies that use the recycling material directly.

She says waste separation at source is important to create awareness of the type of waste being generated and the need for recycling.

Ideally, this should lead to a change in buying habits as consumers avoid non-recyclable products, says Ms Hodges. She says paper and cardboard are the most popular materials. Glass is far less popular, as it offers a low return while its weight makes it difficult to transport.

"Plastic is the most problematic category because there are so many variables," she says. Most recycling companies will buy only certain types of plastic, such as HDPE, PET and LPE. Not all plastic is recyclable. She says recyclers frequently reject unbranded plastic because they do not know what type of plastic it is.

In other situations, although packaging may be marked as recyclable, in practice there are no facilities to reuse the material, says Ms Hodges.

Thousands of jobs have already been created through recycling, according to Musa Chamane, a campaigner for Durban-based non-governmental organisation groundWork. He says more than 15 000 informal waste collectors work on the 71 landfill sites he has visited.

Municipalities are also considering the capture of methane gas from landfill sites. The eThekwini municipality completed a landfill gas-to-electricity project last year - the first of its kind in SA.

According to SA Delivery magazine, the two landfill sites could generate a total of 7,5MW of power.