Cape Town - As she sifted through tons of plastic waste on a tour of recycling plants in Cape Town on Monday, Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy said urgent action was needed to address the plague of plastic pollution and its destructive impacts.
Creecy was joined by a delegation from the UN Environment Programme (Unep), the City of Cape Town, Polyco and Petco to mark World Environment Day on June 2 under the theme “Beat Plastic Pollution”, aimed at focusing on ways of eliminating plastic pollution.
The group visited two recycling plants, Waste Want in Kraaifontein and CRDC SA RESIN8 in the Blackheath industrial area, both involved in different aspects of the recycling value chain but both part of the Extended Producer Responsibility Scheme in plastic recycling. The commemoration concluded with a beach clean-up at Macassar Beach.
“Urgent action is required to combat plastic pollution and its detrimental impacts on human health, the economy and the environment. Our country faces significant waste management challenges. These include poor landfill practices and sporadic household waste collection as well as unacceptable levels of illegal dumping in many parts of the country,” Creecy said.
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in South Africa estimated that more than 2.5 million tons of plastic are produced annually, but poor waste management practices leave at least half of post-consumer plastic not properly disposed of and in danger of entering the environment.
Spotlighting some of the positive work by the two recycling plants in Cape Town, Creecy said: “WasteWant is involved in the separation and baling of waste coming from households. They supply the recycling industry with raw materials (cans, glass, paper etc). This facility is important because it has partnered with the City to ensure that household waste is diverted from landfill,” Creecy said.
Brett Jordaan, chief commercial officer for the Centre for Regenerative Design & Collaboration (CRDC) Global and director of CRDC South Africa, explained that they provided an end-solution for all plastic waste products by using an innovative novel technology that takes non-recyclable waste plastic and turns it into Resin8, an eco-aggregate of synthetic sand that replaces the normal aggregate in concrete products to improve them, which can then be used in construction.
After the visit to the recycling plants, Andrews said the importance of recycling was clear but only a fifth of homes in Cape Town were recycling.
To households not recycling, Andrews stressed the importance of reusing single-use plastics and getting involved in recycling. On the City’s website residents can type in their address and get directions to the closest recycling drop-off site.
“We are sincerely appealing to every household in Cape Town to do more, because that is how we make massive inroads towards reducing plastic pollution,” he said.
Creecy said: “We are calling on all citizens to find finding creative and innovative ways to remove plastic pollution to care for our environment.”
At the 2nd Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC2) on Plastic Pollution in Paris last week South Africa joined 175 countries in working to develop an international legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, by the end of 2024.
kristin.engel@inl.co.za