Circularity: Inside Cape Town’s Waste Sector Plan

Cape Town’s Fifty/50 wheelie bin initiative uses material from condemned rubbish bins to make new ones

Cape Town has set itself some ambitious targets to transform into a resilient and resource-efficient city, specifically when it comes to resource and waste management. One target is to extend the life of its existing landfill space to 2040. This, in turn, requires both a reduction in the waste generated and the diversion of as much waste as possible from landfills.

While recycling and waste beneficiation is generally pushed as a solution, the need to investigate and implement other solutions is becoming crystal clear — one has only to look at the intensity of the city’s waste challenges and the negative impacts experienced by the recycling industry.

One of the objectives of Cape Town’s Waste Sector Plan is to speed up waste minimisation. Greater understanding and communication of the circular economy and its benefits can help achieve this. A project to ‘’prepare for acceleration of waste avoidance through circular economy research” is an initiative undertaken in partnership with Greencape, a non-profit organisation specialising in the green economy. The goal is to help speed up waste avoidance through research that analyses “circular economy initiatives, activities, plans and strategies driving circularity at local government level”. It specifically aims to:

• Map existing stakeholders and initiatives that actively drive and support the city’s circular economy;

Develop an inventory of active international and national plans and strategies to promote and embed circular economy principles into its planning;

Provide tangible recommendations to consider when developing the journey towards circular economy planning. Greencape is also working on a material flow analysis of local agri-processing and textile sectors to identify where to unlock circularity in those sectors.