A growing concern in South Africa is the lack of service delivery and littering in poorer areas. This issue jeopardises the health and safety of South Africans, with the greatest impact on the country’s most vulnerable populations. It is difficult to care about proper disposal of waste when a person is surrounded by litter, and a lack of service to remove that litter.

This is why CoCT has the Green Litter Bin Waste Education and Awareness Project for informal settlements. It is a project that aims to combat the effects of and create awareness around illegal dumping.

The Green Litter Bin Waste Education and Awareness Project

According to CoCT, “this project aims to reduce blockages in ablution facilities and littering in informal settlements by placing green bins outside of public toilets and standpipes. The project is part of a wider campaign that creates awareness about the negative effects of illegal dumping and disposal of inappropriate objects into the sewerage system.”

Because informal settlements often spring up without official planning, they pose a risk of being “outside the system.” To combat this, the city includes them in the system. The Solid Waste Management Department of CoCT says, “In every informal settlement within CoCT’s borders, we have placed bins along the main thoroughfares and in central business districts.” To date the city has placed over 25 000 bins, each bin is serviced weekly by the Urban Waste Management Directorate’s Waste Services – cleansing department.

While CoCT understands that simply placing bins does not prevent illegal dumping, they note that “Some communities have really made proper use of the bins, and the positive impact is felt within those communities.”

A key component of this project is community engagement. CoCT states, “There are day-to-day waste awareness activities, through collaborative interventions such as community clean-ups, or at events such as concerts, sports games or school assembly presentations.”

Recycling in Cape Town

Cape Town positions itself as a city that cares about green initiatives and the growing circular economy. One of the ways that the city does this is to focus on recycling as the pillar for’ healthy’ waste management. As South Africa tries to divert waste to landfills, recycling and adding value to waste streams is an especially useful tool to combat ‘over waste.’

Adding the CoCT’s waste services, the city also has ad hoc removal of garden refuse and the collection of recycling in specified areas. In areas where the city does not offer recycling collection, there are 26 drop-off facilities that provide the opportunity to recycle and offload any non-hazardous waste that cannot be managed via the normal scheduled refuse removal service.

CoCT states “Drop-off sites accept garden refuse, recycling, builders’ rubble, garage waste, white waste (appliances), e-waste, and oil (not all facilities).” They also impose a 1.5-tonne, three-times-a-day limit on vehicles as anything more than this is considered industrial.

To ensure that the waste disposed of is non-hazardous and ensure compliance, each facility “records the waste on an access control register, and all waste is screened at the access control point. Recycling SMMEs responsible for sorting and resale of recovered material will also do further separation if needed.”

Organic waste is accepted at all sites, and 15 of the 16 sites are “earmarked” for “chipping garden greens.”CoCT further says, “The City appoints a service provider for the chipping of garden waste and offsite beneficiation of the mulch generated through the chipping activities. Mulch can be used for composting, in the agriculture sector, as well as in nurseries.”

The city details their recycling activities as follows, “The City appoints SMMEs for the recovery and sorting of recyclables at all drop-off sites. The contractors appointed are given access to the separated recyclables entering the site and can also recover any recyclables that may be present in other waste streams such as garage waste or e-waste. Recyclables are sorted into various categories (e.g., paper/wood/cardboard and subcategories thereof), and the stored in bale bags or baled for sale to the secondary market.”

While the city expands their recycling efforts, they make provision for private recycling collectors who must register with the city. To become a recognised private recycling collector an organisation must draft an Integrated Waste Management (IWM) plan for approval by the City.

To legally operate in Cape Town, the following must be included in their IWM:

• An assessment of the quantity and type of waste disposed.
• a description of the waste services required to store, collect, transport, and dispose of the waste.
• a plan to separate recyclable and non-recyclable material at the point of source;
• a waste minimisation plan.
• a pollution prevention plan.
• details of the potential environmental impact of the waste.
• the type or characteristics of environmentally sensitive waste.
• the targets for recovery of waste (minimisation, reuse, recycling).
• Plans to handle emergencies.

Each plan is then reviewed by the city, and if approved, “Accredited service providers and waste generators are also required to report to the city on processed waste. This data then informs the City’s broader waste strategy.”

The Think Twice programme

Part of what makes recycling difficult is that South Africa has very few ‘separation at source’ incentives. To aid in their recycling goals and broader waste strategy CoCT introduced the Think Twice programme. According to the city, “This programme is a free door-to-door recycling collection programme for homes and businesses in selected areas around Cape Town. The city appoints contractors to carry out this service. Instead of disposing of all household waste together in one black bag, CoCT encourages people to think twice and use two bags. Separating the recyclable material from the non-recyclable waste.”

The trial project started in the Marina de Gama area, using lessons learned from this trial, the city decided to further expand the separate collection of recyclables to areas where appointed private sector waste management companies were already collecting general waste on behalf of the city. The waste services of CoCT state, “Two factors informing this decision were the agility of the private sector to add additional services to their offering, as well as their less restricted access to the recycling commodity markets, to which the recyclables needed to be sold.”

Currently, the City offers a separate door-to-door recycling collection service, known as “Think Twice” to over 200 000 Cape Town “households” (or service points, including blocks of flats), and has progressively been increasing this reach for approximately 20 years, as additional sorting facilities and budget becomes available and as confidence in the service continues to grow.

This project is more successful in the middle to higher-income areas than lower-income areas, pointing the city to look at alternative models to accommodate this.

CoCT goes to say, “With the commissioning of the strategically placed Kraaifontein Materials Recovery Facility in 2011, the service was significantly expanded in the areas surrounding this facility, to ensure efficient collection logistics.”

This project can be seen on the City of Cape Town map viewer by toggling the layers.

Expanding efforts

As previously mentioned, the Think Twice programme did not do well in lower-income areas, leading the city to an alternative solution: Swop Shop. CoCT explains, “the mobile Swop Shop Service, where residents can swap their clean recyclables for groceries and related items in the Swop Shop Trailer. This business model was trialed between 2020 and 2023 and found to be very suitable for lower-income communities. As such, an expanded trial is planned for 2025 and 2026, to fine-tune the logistics and service delivery mechanism, to inform further rollout. The 2025-26 Swop Shop Trailer will service a minimum of 5 lower-income communities in Cape Town.”

Alongside this programme, the 2020 revision of the Extended Producer Responsibility Regulations heralded an opportunity for municipalities to leverage resources provided by the Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs), representing producers who are mandated to ensure that recyclables flow into the economy, rather than landfills. The city is collaborating with the PROs to co-design appropriate business models to make this happen.

The city says, “The city is aware of a door-to-door recycling collection service being trialed in two suburbs in Cape Town, funded by the PROs and implemented by a Non-Profit Company known as The Recyclers Association (TRA) since October 2024. Although the City is not directly involved in the implementation of this trial, the Urban Waste Management Department provides guidance and insight to the project team with the joint aim of accelerating the separation of recyclables at source in a diverse manner.”

Industry

The CoCT tries to leverage the private sector to aid in its waste plans, while there is a considerable effort focused on communities and households. The city also started the Western Cape Industrial Symbiosis Programme (WISP). Symbiosis is the practice of using one industry’s waste as the raw material for another, this practice is key to the emerging circular economy of South Africa.

This project is facilitated by GreenCape, a non-profit organisation that drives the widespread adoption of economically viable green economy solutions from South Africa. GreenCape markets the service among industry and business, GreenCape then provides a free-of-charge consultation service (funded by the City of Cape Town), as well as constructive collaboration sessions. These ‘synergy sessions’ aim to understand what resources are underused for possible exchange with other interested partners and to facilitate connections between parties who wish to exchange resources.

To date, WISP has facilitated over 220 synergies resulting in:

• Over 135 000 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill.
• The saving of greenhouse gas emissions is equivalent to 117 840 households.
• The generation of R150 million in additional revenue, cost savings, and investment.
• The creation of 398 jobs.

The City of Cape Town says it will continue to expand, fine-tune, and implement solutions that work for all its residents.