Pikitup has opened a cutting edge garden site in northern Johannesburg, where recycling green waste will be more efficient. There is also a recycling point for e-waste.

THIS plant is the cycle of birth and death. So said Siva Pillay, Pikitup's managing director, at the launch of the utility's latest innovation, a centre of excellence "where all green waste is shredded [and] sent to the composting plant in Panorama to make manure to fertilise more growing plants".

Offloading garden waste

Joburg's waste management utility opened its first ever centre of excellence garden site in Bryanston, where the latest technology will be used to process green waste.

The Ballyclare Garden Site, at the corner of William Nicol and Ballyclare drives, is the busiest garden site in Johannesburg and handles between 3 000 and 3 500 tonnes of waste a month. It has been equipped with a state-of-the-art, low-speed shredder that will begin recycling garden waste on site.

And productivity at the site will increase by 50 percent, translating directly into improved service delivery to residents and improved economies for Pikitup. Launching the site on Thursday, 7 December, Pillay said 25 percent of waste in the City had been going to landfills and the plant would help reduce Joburg's landfills.

The shredder, a powerful machine that can chew up tree stumps up to 400mm in diameter, can process up to 200 tonnes of green waste a day when operating at full capacity. On average, it could process between 80 and 90 tonnes, said Dick Mulder, Pikitup's garden site manager.

Pikitup has also installed a bin rail shuttle system, an automated bin-handling contraption that works in conjunction with the shredder to prepare the processed material for collection by trucks. "Before the instalment of the shredding machine, three trucks were used to service the site daily to collect waste for the composting site. Only one truck is now required per day to transport shredded waste," Mulder said.

One of the goals of the Ballyclare Garden Site was to make the centre as user friendly as possible by allowing people easy access to the facility. Users can drive in, make use of the chosen facility and drive out with the minimum hassle.

The centre, opened in 1979 and upgraded in 1993, has a cement slab around the system to facilitate easy disposal of garden waste. It is continually serviced by a front-end loader that collects the green waste and feeds it to the shredder, which processes the material.

The latest technology is also available, alongside recycling points for paper, tin, glass, plastic and oil. E-waste, electrical gadgets like old computer and microwaves, can also be recycled at the centre. It is a direct response to the growing demand for environmentally friendly facilities and Pikitup plans to open a further nine such nodes around Johannesburg in 2007 and 2008.

These centres of excellence formed part of Pikitup's 16-year strategic road map that aimed to conserve air space at the city's landfill sites and introduce new technologies, processes and systems to meet the national targets of 50 percent reduction of waste to landfill sites by 2012 and 70 percent reduction of waste to landfill sites by 2022, Pillay said.

"As part of Pikitup's road map implementation, the utility will include an extensive public information sharing and education process in order to secure the co-operation and support of Johannesburg's residents," he said.