Lewis Simelane
SWAZILAND’S infant recycling industry is seeking to overcome the country’s outdated waste management policies that stand in the way of financial gain and job creation through the exploitation of the mountains of refuse that begrime part of the picturesque landscape.
“We export all our product to South Africa, where it is processed – 30 tons weekly. But this is only about 10 percent of the total rubbish created in Swaziland each week,” Sifiso Ginindza, the director of Envirowise Waste Management, told Business Report. The Swazi-owned company’s waste separation facility is on the outskirts of Matsapha, where the manufacturing sector is largely concentrated.
The commercial hub, Manzini, collects 800 to 900 tons of refuse weekly, although like other Swaziland locations its output of recyclable materials is actually more voluminous because many people reside in informal settlements without municipal refuse collection.
Manzini is working with Envirowise on Swaziland’s first residential neighbourhood recycling effort.
Other municipalities have not shown such foresight so far, and are content to overlook the income and job creation possibilities available from recycling.
Consequently, Envirowise must be proactive to acquire refuse to separate into glass, paper and plastic. The firm collects from Shoprite and other supermarkets, factories and large private businesses that offer its primary supply of recyclables.
“We have pick-up trucks daily going to Ezulwini, Manzini, Matsapha, Mbabane, Nhlangano and Siphofaneni,” Samantha Banda, the research and marketing officer for Envirowise, said.
Metal scrap collection has been popular in the country for years, but has taken a toll on the electricity and telecoms infrastructure. Thieves cause phone and power blackouts as they steal copper wire, circuit boxes and anything metal for resale to dealers who ask no questions about the origin of the materials.
Drivers seeking locations in towns have a hard time because street signs have been stolen for scrap. Perpetrators are rarely caught. However, the activity can be fatal. Once a year a thief is electrocuted trying to cut a live wire.
For more than a decade, a localised recycling project has involved a dozen Mbabane women who pick out bottles from the capital city’s dump for reuse at Ngwenya Glass near the western border with South Africa. The items are melted and reblown into glass animals that are popular with tourists and exported overseas. However, the initiative has not been duplicated elsewhere.
Swaziland’s landfills have also attracted impoverished families who have established informal settlements built out of found materials. Residents feed themselves from restaurant and supermarket discards dumped at their doorsteps and scavenge for items to resell.
These scavengers have now become the first Swazis who profit from the type of recycling work long established elsewhere in the world.
“We provide them with protective gear and collection bags – 15 collectors are employed at Manzini’s landfill. Every Friday we come with our truck and mobile scale. We pay from R150 for one ton of glass bottles to R1 000 for a ton of clear plastic. We resell at double what we pay for glass to Nampak in South Africa,” Ginindza said.
“Paper goes to Golden Era, which has a paper mill in South Africa, and plastics go to Transpaco in Johannesburg. We are basically collectors of Swaziland’s recyclables and a supplier to those companies.”
Demonstration recycling bins located outside Manzini city council’s office and at a shopping mall in Mbabane’s upscale Ezulwini suburb are the only collection points for recyclables in the country.
A lack of public awareness into the need for, and profitability of, recycling shows a similarity to the general lack of environmental awareness.
“Recycling will not take off in Swaziland until the public is educated on the need to do more than throw away rubbish or burn it.
“There must be economic incentives to recycle, even if these are negative incentives like fines on homeowners who do not recycle,” Musa Ndwandwe, an environmentalist, said.
Recycling also offers legal and less dangerous income than stealing electric wire and highway signs. Envirowise employs 30 people at its Matsapha facility, whose sole function is to separate refuse by type and bundle collected materials into packages for transport.
Landfill refuse collectors in remote locations are largely mothers or grandmothers supporting children, suggesting the business of recycling has not caught on with Swazi men and youth.
With South African firms eager to purchase recyclables, a fortune is bound up in Swaziland’s discarded waste, its first recyclers believe.
“If we could process just 50 percent of the waste from Manzini alone, we would need to operate 24-hour shifts,” Ginindza said.
Even a small increase in collections would require significant expansion and employee hiring. Currently in plan is a R2 million conveyor belt where workers separate rubbish into categories.