South Africa leads the way in waste management in Africa, but many other countries on the continent are up to speed with their environmental legislation – usually based on World Bank standards.
This is the opinion of Bruce Engelsman, a partner at consulting engineering firm SRK Consulting.“Elsewhere in Africa where national waste management standards are not yet in place, South African standards are applied with the agreement of clients and authorities,” says Engelsman. This may happen when infrastructural capacity – like the logistical infrastructure – lags behind the project development boom. “Appropriate waste management is often one of the casualties, as waste is often produced prior to any meaningful waste management strategies or infrastructure being in place,” he continues.From law to action
Turning the law into action is, of course, the key challenge – and this is where guideline are invaluable: to help standardise the way that authorities at various levels apply the legal requirements and the formats in which they plan, licence, monitor and report. To ensure that our laws are well implemented, South Africa’s National Waste Management Strategy requires local authorities to develop Integrated Waste Management Plans (IWMPs), which must be integrated into those of their respective district municipalities and then eventually integrated into a Provincial Waste Management Plan. As a tool to help local authorities in KwaZulu-Natal, SRK Consulting was contracted by the province’s Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs to develop guidelines that would lead to high quality IWMPs in a standard format. “The guideline document is therefore to build capacity and guide municipalities,” says Kirsten King, senior environmental scientist for SRK in KwaZulu-Natal. “It gives the user a step-by-step approach to key issues like what information their plan needs, how the data can be obtained and how to generate information from the data.” An IWMP needs to be regularly reviewed, updated and expanded, and must include an implementation plan that specifies required action, timeframes and budgets, continues King. “Guidelines help all municipalities to plan and budget for their waste management activities in a methodical format, so that they feed easily into the integrated development plan process.” However, capacity and financial constraints nevertheless result in many South African municipalities in rural areas still using disposal facilities, which are informal and unlicensed. “In this respect, the focus of waste management in many smaller municipalities is on developing formal licensed waste disposal facilities and extending waste collection services beyond the formal urban areas,” states King.Reduce, reuse, recycle
There is also much work to be done in terms of implementing accepted waste management principles based on the ‘waste hierarchy’ – where waste should first be reduced, reused and recycled. Disposal in land-fill sites, for instance, should be very much a last resort. Among the factors that should encourage governments all over Africa to implement the waste hierarchy is the high cost of appropriately designed landfills. “The cost of implementing appropriately designed landfills in Africa is high,” explains Engelsman. “This is often due to remoteness of locations and lack of locally available resources and products. The logistics involved in constructing landfills outside of South Africa are also cumbersome and contribute to costs and project delays.” But where there is political will, there has been substantial progress, he states. Having successfully completed two large projects in Angola, Engelsman says the Angolan authorities clearly displayed their commitment to ensure low environmental impacts when it came to waste management.“Licensing is required, as well as monitoring and follow-up auditing – and commitments made at environmental impact assessment stage are well policed,” he continues.
