The recycling challenge exposed

Contrary to the widely-held belief among the affluent sections of society that household recycling ceased in the third week of May when blue bags distribution stopped, recycling continues.

At the crack of dawn, rain or shine, bands of faceless illegal waste-pickers or informal waste collectors appear on the streets of George on garbage collection days. Heavily laden supermarket and homemade trollies unlawfully use the roads moving from house to house, collecting metal, glass, paper and plastic on their way to approved waste sorting houses where the waste is further sorted, baled, legalised and sent on to the various recycling mills across the country. Those faceless “heroes” are the saving grace of the blue bag crisis, which is once again playing itself out in the George arena.

This has placed the municipality between a rock and a hard place as, technically, it is estimated that the army of waste pickers are illegally collecting in excess of 10% of George's recyclable waste every day, a source of income for the poorest of the poor.

Greenies see red when Council's refuse trucks collect the heaps of neatly packed blue recycling bags along with the black bags of household waste and compact them in the back of the truck, further fuelling the urban legend that the recycling process is over. However, the process continues at the George waste transfer station, next to the showgrounds. The process at the transfer station may not be as effective as the blue bag system, but it is happening. Three metal cages on the premises filled with recyclable items bear testament to the work done by Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) waste-pickers working at the station. The recyclables are sold to private recycling companies.

The workers doing the sorting use their own transport to sell the recyclables and receive payment for it. The municipality has confirmed that any blue or clear bags put out for recycling will be collected at the same time as the black bags.

The blue / clear plastic bags are compacted together with the black bags, but are then extracted at the transfer station.

While most people are aware of the importance of recycling and the benefits it can provide to the environment, not everyone understands that there is a distinction between what can and cannot be recycled. The challenge facing the industry is that a large percentage of packaging does not have the recycling emblem, so theoretically it cannot be recycled and lands up in the landfill site in Mossel Bay, which we are all trying to avoid.

Residents think that if something is made from plastic or cardboard, it can automatically be recycled. This, however, does not apply to frozen foods packaging, which has a plasticised cover to protect the food and prevent the cartons from becoming soggy, many of the plastic food trays, plastic covers of household and kitchen items that are strengthened by infusing non-recyclable chemicals, shopping bags and cardboard milk boxes that do not have the international recognised recycle logo. Shredded paper also represents a problem for recycling plants, due to the difficulty of sorting the recyclable paper from the non-recyclable material.

If you recycle plastic water or cold drink bottles, detergent bottles or other containers with a hard plastic twist-off or flip-top cap, be sure to remove them before tossing them in the recycling bin. These types of caps are usually made from polypropylene, and can't be recycled by all the mills. Styrofoam and expanded polystyrene are difficult to recycle as few of the mills have the technical ability to rework these products.

The unrecyclable items mixed into the recycling bags is a headache for the sorting houses as they have to painstakingly remove these items, a costly process that reduces profit margins. Handling recyclable waste is a complex business with little latitude for error. Despite all the negativity around waste, there is a ray of hope at the end of this dark tunnel. The technology to build smaller, more efficient waste-to-energy conversion plants is increasing rapidly. In the nottoo-distant future, the municipality will have to embark on a feasibility study on whether George can afford to erect a waste-to-energy facility. But much has to fall into place before we can reach that point.

Please continue to recycle. Our future depends on it.