No more long and messy trips to the bottle bank - thousands of residents will start recycling their waste at source within a month.

The Pikitup stand at the conference

WITHIN the next month, about 37 000 households in Johannesburg will begin to recycle their waste at source as part of a new pilot programme initiated by Pikitup.

Households in and around Dainfern, including Diepsloot; in Randburg and along Hendrik Potgieter Road in Roodepoort will be part of this massive initial recycling campaign. Pikitup hopes to extend it to other areas as time goes by in an effort to decrease the growing mounds of waste going to its landfills.

Each household will be issued with two bins, one for recyclable materials such as paper and plastic and the other for non-recyclable, contaminated waste.

Thabiso Taaka, the chief operating officer of Pikitup, says that in the past Pikitup had very rudimentary ways to deal with its waste challenges, but it is now better poised to take advantage of new technologies.

"We are developing more efficient ways of collecting waste while maximising our social impact."

The company's operational efficiency also benefits job creation, of which the two-bin recycle at source project is one. "There will be two bins to be collected, each collected by a different fleet. So we will be using more manpower."

Pikitup will involve private waste recycling organisations and expects the project to be self-funding.

Waste conference
Pikitup representatives are at the national Waste Conference in Durban, running from 6 to 10 October, where they have been showcasing its two-bin pilot project to some 680 delegates from across the country.

The company is also exhibiting at the event, showing a pictorial overview of how waste collection has evolved over time in Johannesburg.

"There have been a lot of changes in the way waste is collected, so we thought it would be meaningful to highlight this evolutionary process at our exhibition," says Zami Nkosi, Pikitup's managing director.

Waste collection has evolved over the years from the old horse and hand cart system, to open trucks and bakkies, to the modern wheelie bins and hydraulic trucks that now collect waste around Johannesburg.

Waste mechanisation first came to the city in 1938.

"Waste management has come a long way in Johannesburg and we can thank people, animals and machines for this progress," says Nkosi, adding that more changes and innovations will occur in the future as waste management authorities meet ongoing challenges posed by economic growth and urbanisation.

One new technology initiated by Pikitup is the underground bins, first rolled out in the inner city in 2007. This project will be extended to high-traffic areas such as the new Baragwanath Taxi and Bus facility and the Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication in Kliptown.

Too much to handle
But while the purpose of the conference is to expose everyone to new waste management technologies and thinking, it also is creating a realisation of the growing waste challenges facing South Africa.

There is a growing sense of urgency among waste practitioners and generators of waste that the culture of recycling in the country needs to be changed, says Sipho Makhasane, the technical support manager for the Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa, organisers of the event.

Two key issues stemming from conference discussions are that waste management should be elevated to a higher priority, and that we are generating more waste than we can handle, he says.

According to Makhasane, the biggest challenge for waste management practitioners is the separation of waste at source. The country generates some 100-million kilograms of waste a day, or about two kilograms every day per person.

"The conference [is looking] at initiatives to minimise some of that waste through different technologies designed to assist in recycling, composting, and waste separation." Waste recycling not only benefits the environment but also brings about cost efficiencies.

A country such as Denmark, which admittedly has a smaller population and fewer development challenges, generates only 35 000 tons of waste a month, the same amount of waste being generated by only one landfill in this country.

"The understanding and culture of recycling is entrenched in that country [Denmark], and also money is invested in waste management ... For me, that was a wake-up call."

The conference is a bi-annual event now in its 19th year. It is being held at Durban's International Conference Centre, and ends on 10 October. The overall theme of the conference is Minimising waste and its effects on society.

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