Durban - About 50 tons of solid waste is expected to be harvested for recycling after eThekwini’s main six
rivers spewed out plastic, glass, tin, polystyrene and paper after this
week’s flooding.
Hanno Langenhoven, strategic manager for recycling at Wildlands Conservation Trust, said by yesterday teams had taken about 20 tons off the beaches near the Mgeni River mouth.
“In the next two to three weeks, 40 people from Wildlands and the Litterboom project will be on the beaches every day,” he said.
“We are all upset about the stuff we see on the beach but the problem is that it has been in the river systems. Now it is visible.”
The port’s pollution control teams were tackling the debris within port waters, aided by clean-up teams from SpillTech, Drizit and ZMK Enterprises, said acting Durban Port manager, Nokuzola Nkowane.
“Progress is slow because of the sheer volume of material that still continues to wash in,” she said.
SA Association for Marine Biological Research’s Judy Mann-Lang said the plastic pollution had generated an incredible amount of interest in the issue.
“More and more people have seen the magnitude of the problem and are taking action.
“I hope people will see a plastic bag and think about where it will end up.”
Mann-Lang added that she noticed fewer plastic straws in the muck than after previous floods, hoping the campaign against them had borne fruit.
“There are multiple clean-ups this weekend,” said Mann-Lang, urging people to participate.
In Durban North, environmental educator and entrepreneur Lindsay Hopkins said she was “blown away” at the response to her postings on social media for morning clean-ups at Beachwood Mangroves at the Mgeni Mouth from 8am today and at the Royal Natal Yacht Club from 9am.
Other clean-ups people may join are from 9am to 11am today at Pipeline Beach, eManzimtoti, tomorrow, from 8am to 11am at eManzimtoti main beach and on Monday from 9am to 11am at the Mgeni Mouth.
The following Monday, May 6, will see another 9am to 1am clean-up at Mgeni Mouth.
Langenhoven said the solution lay in the government “doing what it should be doing” in terms of waste removal, industry designing plastic products for recycling rather than for aesthetics and saleability, and consumers managing their waste.
“Packaging is not efficient. It’s good at keeping products safe, healthy and long-lasting, but not sufficient at post-consumer processing.”
He said plastic “sits in the environment” for 500 to 1000 years, creating carbon emission as it degrades, leading to global warming.
Anton Hanekom, executive director of Plastics SA, expressed disgust at the volume of plastic pollution in KZN’s rivers. “This event, more than any in recent times, reinforces the need for all of us - the industry, the government and consumers - to defeat the scourge of plastic pollution in our country,” he said.
“The root of the problem is non-
existent solid waste management systems for the proper disposal of waste, and a lack of recycling infrastructure.”
Hanekom said the Department of Environmental Affairs recently showed that South Africa generated 108 million tons of general waste a year. “Only 10% of this is recycled.”
He said in 2017, the industry
collected more than 43% of packaging placed on the market for recycling, with less than 700000 tons going to landfill. “The industry is showing year-on-year increases in the recycling rate, with less plastic waste going to landfills, but its efforts alone are not going to win the war on plastic pollution.”
Hanekom said plastic - if disposed of correctly - was more environmentally friendly than alternatives because it had a much lighter carbon footprint.
He proposed the ring-fencing of funds raised from the plastic bag levy to be used on the upgrading and maintaining of recycling infrastructure. That way, the government could create thousands of new jobs “while safeguarding the 100000 formal and informal jobs that the plastics industry currently provides”.