Cape Town - Like the saying goes, one man’s trash is another’s treasure, and thousands of South Africans have turned to recycling to put bread on the table.
They now plan to form an integration of informal waste collection services in the formal economy.
According to the African Reclaimers Organisation (ARO) there are more than 7 000 registered informal recyclers nationwide. Founder Luyanda Hlatshwayo said they saw growth in numbers after the Covid-19 pandemic, with people desperately looking for means to earn an income.
This made them realise the need for regulations to ensure fairness among the participants. They are in the process of registering all involved recycling individuals nationwide, starting in provinces that have shown massive interest in the project, with Gauteng, Mpumalanga and the Western Cape taking the lead.
“More people are joining and the problem is the lack of regulations and having some of our members manipulated by those in the corporate. For example, here in Johannesburg we can charge R7 a kilo of plastic, but to my shock people in Cape Town are paid 50c and they can’t legally dispute it because we have no formal structures. It’s for this reason we started recording and wanting to advocate for collectors to be recognised and treated like all others in the business sector,” explained Hlatshwayo.
This is confirmed by 61-year-old local recycler Nompumelelo Njana, from Khayelitsha, who said engagements were under way, with one taking place today at Andile Msizi Hall.
“We’re a group of unemployed people between the ages of 18 and 81 who don’t shy away from working hard to feed our families, and with the new proposal of formalising recycling, here in Cape Town we host meetings to familiarise our members and mobilise others to not sit and wait for government support but work with what they have to survive. We have 1 500 committed recyclers and some who are still to be registered.
“We don’t just collect the garbage; we turn it into cash by selling to big companies, upskill the people and promote environmental conservation. With every paper, plastic or metal we remove from the land, we save humans and animals from pollution,” said Njana.
Independent recycler Glenda Williamson, from Table View, supports the idea of regulating the industry as it would give dignity to participants.
“Our end goal is to employ the less fortunate and educate them on how recycling saves the universe and how to generate an income for themselves.
“Not everyone likes the idea of working with recycling or as they call it, rubbish. I had neighbourhood watch pull up and start shouting at me for digging in the bins.”
They work with a variety of waste, from residential areas to landfills, and beginners are trained in sorting waste and identifying what is to be sold and what is to be upcycled into home-made products and sold as artwork, such as mats, bags, toys and decorating items.
The City’s Mayco member for Urban Waste Management, Grant Twigg, said: “The City embarks on proactive measures to identify new recycling service providers regularly, and they are invited to be profiled. We worked with academic partners during 2018 to 2020, where a minimum of 120 buyback centres were identified, and 70 of these buyback centres were surveyed, to better understand their role in the value chain, in terms of direct employment, indirect income creation through buying recyclables from them, and quantity of recyclables processed.”
Weekend Argus