MBOMBELA’S WASTE ‘HUSTLERS’
A small gesture is to place your aluminium cans separately from the rest of your refuse. The waste pickers will soon get used to it and appreciate it. Remember, food cans and aerosols do not qualify for reclamation at street level. Lastly, spare a thought for our hustlers when you see them. It is a thankless job!
Love them or hate them, the small army of people who sift through our refuse every day searching for items to recycle, perform a useful function in our town, and an entire cottage industry has developed countrywide over the years.
It is backbreaking work with little reward, but the “hustlers”, as they prefer to be called, perform their task cheerfully and without complaint.
Lowvelder decided to tag along with recycler Mpendulo Mashego to investigate the process.
Mashego rents a room in Mataffin for R250 per month, and also has to make enough money to pay for food, clothing and electricity. If he is lucky, he returns to visit his family at month-end.
We meet up with Mashego and his colleagues, most of whom are from Bushbuckridge, on refuse removal day in Koraalboom Avenue.
The first step is to prepare a bag of empty beer cans, a not altogether unpleasant task.
They eagerly await the putting out of the black bags, and dive straight into their work, as much needs to be done before sunset.
He directs us along the route he takes with his trolley every day except Sundays with the aluminium cans he gathers, a gruelling walk of 7km across town to Frane Scrap Metals in the industrial area. “This place gives the best price,” said Mashego.
The yard is a hive of activity, and we speak to the manager, Morné Craffert. “The number of cans that comes in varies through the year, with an increase in the summer months. We had a bumper week after the recent rugby test,” said Craffert.
Mashego joins a short queue to deliver our cargo, which is weighed by employee Sizwe. He receives his reward on the spot along with a neat receipt. R10 for about 25 cans.
“We offer R15 per kilogram of aluminium,” said Craffert. “The price we get from the wholesale buyers varies a lot, and the profit margin is small. The bulk aluminium goes up to Gauteng, where it is melted down or transported to Durban before being melted and recycled into new cans.”
The cans are put into a sorting bin, where unwanted elements are removed.
They are then neatly crushed into 2kg bales. Mashego said he delivers roughly 3kg of cans per day, and that he estimates there to be well over 100 hustlers operating in the suburbs. This would equate to over 300kg of cans recycled per day, which is no mean feat. They also collect bottles, but only those that can earn a deposit.
“We do not communicate with the council or the official refuse collectors at all, but it would be nice if Government could provide us with equipment like gloves, overalls, safety boots and masks. We do get sick while working.”
There is little recycling happening in the rural areas like Bushbuckridge, said Mashego, as “there is no money there”.