Rather incentivise citizens to recycle

The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality recently decided to start charging residents R575 for a permit every time they want to burn garden refuse. Offenders face fines of up to R1,500 if found to be burning without a permit. It is part of the municipality’s strategy of moving toward a “greener” city by clamping down on air pollution. Municipal spokesman Mthubanzi Mniki told this newspaper earlier this week: “Climate change is a reality. It is caused by dumping pollutants into the atmosphere.

“To ensure sustainable development, citizens should consider other means of disposing of vegetation such as reducing, re-use and recycling.”

He said braais and wood fires in informal settlements for cooking or heating were exempt from the bylaw, but the burning of tyres fell under offences.

The R575 permit has caused an uproar, particularly among residents in the outlying areas and on farms who have to tend to piles of dry vegetation daily. This, they said, would force people to start burning without permits because the fee was excessive and it would ultimately leave the municipality with many fires to tend to.

They raise a valid point.

It would be difficult for the municipality to police. It plans to use a drone to catch those who do it on the sly, but the plan is not foolproof.

Granted, the metro has a responsibility to protect the environment and ensure fires do not flare up all over the place, but the blanket permit cost is harsh and excessive.

Introducing a permit fee for the first time in this financial year, it is unclear how the metro got to the amount of R575. What is blatantly clear is that it slipped through the budgeting public participation process.

Ours is not the “greenest” of countries when it comes to social attitudes about climate change.

For this reason, it is perhaps wiser for the metro to incentivise residents to recycle rather than punish them.

It would not be wise to use this as a revenue stream to try to suck more money out of ratepayers already burdened with the excessive costs of living.