Pretoria - Minister for Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Barbara Creecy encouraged the people of Tshwane not to see waste as rubbish, but money.
Creecy made the remarks leading a clean-up campaign in Pretoria to provide another platform for the department to execute its constitutional mandate to ensure people’s right to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being.
In the spirit Earth Day on Friday, community members in Danville and Pretoria West joined Creecy picking up waste from various illegal dumping sites such as Phillip Nel Park.
Creecy and her team were inspired by President Cyril Ramaphosa, who during the launch of the Good Green Deeds campaign in 2019, called on citizens, business, industry, labour and civil society to perform just one good green deed a day, such as recycling waste or doing clean-up activities.
The Good Green Deeds campaign seeks to change people’s attitudes and behaviours towards responsible management of waste, and keeping their neighbourhoods clean, green and safe.
Creecy told Pretoria News that she wanted people to see waste as money and have an interest to reclaim that waste.
She said this was a habit that would ultimately ensure that the environment was clean. “Also, we want those who produce these products to take responsibility for the whole life-cycle of their products,” she said.
“We want them to think when they produce, for example, plastic products, what the future life of that plastic product is.
“We know plastic will last for hundreds of years in the environment and that is why it is a dangerous product.
“We have to reduce the amount of plastic that is in the environment and one of the ways in which we can do that is by promoting recycling of plastic products."
She said Atteridgeville was one of the areas that had buy-back centres where communities could take glass, plastic, metal and other forms of waste that had value, to have them purchased.
She said the government was concerned about plastic pollution falling into water sources because plastic could travel from streams into main river systems and eventually wetlands.
“Wetlands perform a service which we call an ecosystem service. It’s a service that nature provides for free, which otherwise the City of Tshwane would have to spend a lot of money providing.
“A wetland help absorb floods and store water for times of drought. When it’s covered with a layer of plastic, it’s not able to perform flood absorption and water storage services.”
Residents Aaron Tau and Lebogang Makhaku said it was commendable to see a minister demonstrating political will to curb illegal dumping.
“Pretoria West has a lot of illegal immigrants living in hijacked properties, so they dump a lot of waste in the Zeiler Street stream,” Tau said.
Makhaku added: “Not so long ago, illegal shacks were demolished near the stream.”
Pretoria News