Durban - UKZN Professor Cristina Trois recently received an Italian knighthood with the title of Cavaliere delle Repubblica Italiana, receiving the Ordine Della Stella D’Italia for her work in environmental engineering.
She was also the first woman to hold the SA Research Chair (SARChi) in Waste and Climate Change, the first female dean and head of UKZN’s School of Engineering, as well as being a leading academic in her field based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal for 20 years. But with a gentle wave of her hand, she brushed aside all these accomplishments when she started talking about the focus of her work - climate change, waste management and wastewater engineering.
According to Trois, more than 90% of eThekwini’s waste goes to landfills and if this could be redirected into different streams with waste being used as a resource, it would reduce waste and could well provide many jobs.
“We need separation at source, long before it gets to the landfill site,” she said, adding that in Europe, legislation was in place to separate different forms of waste.
“We don’t even have separate collection in place and the majority of our waste is not separated. South Africa needs to transition to a green economy and scientists can help to inform and assist in this transition. We need to put climate change back on the agenda. There is no doubt we are contributing to climate change, scientists have said that clearly. It is up to the politicians to take action,” she said, highlighting that the government could tap into the capacity within SA universities to find solutions.
She uses the storm and resulting floods across Durban in April, which saw debris and solid waste being washed into the port and beaches, as an example of how climate change was linked to waste and waste management. Trois said precise policies to reduce and stabilise the impact of the industrial sector would be a major step in the right direction and that the public needed to speak out, while also highlighting that energy from fossil fuels was no longer a cheap option for South Africans.
“It’s very important to diversify from fossil fuel to other sources of energy,” she said.
With the university having partnered with the Durban Green Corridor (which set up the litter boom project in KZN rivers), Trois also announced their joint Neptune Project at the same event on August 7 when she was awarded her knighthood. The project is to raise awareness of how waste could be reused and recycled.
“It comes down to the three Rs: reduce, reuse and recycle. Waste has to be transferred and utilised for new purposes,” she said, giving examples such as organic waste used for biogas, waste as a treatment solution for wastewater or eco-fashion, to name a few.
With the green industry and the repurposing of waste creating new channels of business, there was also high potential for job creation in such new industries. “Waste strategies used to be chosen by municipalities by cost, with the cheapest being used. Now we need to choose the solution which maximises job creation. Waste resources also means waste wealth.
“We have also been experimenting with ‘green concrete’ for years which looks at creating building alternatives.:
Trois was born and raised in Sardinia. “I wanted to do architecture, but my father, who was a mining engineer, said I must start with engineering which I did and never went back to architecture. At that time, climate change was not top of the agenda. In my hometown university in Sardinia, environmental engineering was introduced the same year I started in 1989. While there was little talk about environmental engineering, mining had been prominent on the island but mining engineering was dying, so all the professors were ‘recycling’ themselves and starting geo-engineering and environmental engineering. Basically they created completely new degrees,” she said.
But that also put Trois in a pioneering position within the enviro-engineering field and with her home university having links to the University of KwaZulu-Natal, she came to Durban to research her PhD.
Twenty years later, she is still here and has spearheaded initiatives such as “Engineering is a Girl Thing” and was first runner-up in the 2016 Department of Science and Technology’s Women in Science Awards.
Some of her career highlights include the development of an innovative “cellular method” of landfilling adopted in Durban’s landfill sites; a contribution to the first African “landfill-gas-to-electricity” project, through which the city of Durban produces 10MW of electricity from waste; and her current work on multi-national research: The Hub for the African City of the Future.
“Climate change is changing everything, which will be worse for extreme weather areas such as Durban. We need to move from a resilient city to sustainable to smart to wise which is when specific policies are in place.”