The City of Cape Town has managed to divert 10 million cubic meters of garden refuse from going to landfill.

The City recently celebrated the major milestone in the war against waste, which it achieved in partnership with Reliance, the leading organic compost provider in the Western Cape.

Cape Town’s solid waste landfill sites are quickly filling up and waste will need to be transported to sites outside of the municipal boundaries in the near future – at a significant cost.Reliance was contracted to shred green garden refuse collected from the city’s drop-off facilities and landfills in 2001 and has been taking care of Cape Town’s green waste since. Reliance recycles garden refuse into compost and has put over 750 000 tons of organic compost back into the soil. The company’s zero organic waste to landfill mission is in line with the City’s vision.

Reliance CEO, Detlev Meyer speaking at a luncheon to celebrate the achievement, said the most important achievement is the reduction of a daily average of 238 tons of Green House Gasses. Reliance is carbon neutral and has had its composting technology approved as a Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction method according to the guidelines of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.