Already plagued by multiple service delivery crises caused by ageing and dilapidated energy, transport and water infrastructure, SA faces yet another messy problem.
Driven by population growth and urbanisation, landfill sites in the country’s largest metros are filling up at a much faster pace than new capacity is being secured, putting waste management services in a race against time to establish new landfills — an expensive and administratively cumbersome process — and to find solutions to divert more waste from landfills.
An award-winning organic waste management project in Nairobi, Kenya, Sanergy can offer some inspiration for finding a solution the management of organic waste — biodegradable waste that comes from plants or animals, such as food waste — that can create jobs and address environmental concerns at the same time.
We must think of waste as a resource, says Sanergy MD Michael Lwoyelo. “It is the only resource that increases as populations and consumption grow.”
Market research estimates vary widely but place the value of the food and organic waste management market roughly between $34bn and $62bn, and it is expected to double within the next 10 years.
The opportunity for improvement in SA is large — the country’s first (and most recent) State of Waste Report, published in 2017, said that SA generated about 120-million tonnes of waste per year of which 53-million tonnes were general waste with a recycling rate of 38% (for general waste). About 60% of general waste was organic waste with a recycling rate of 45%, but that included industrial recycling of biomass from sugar mills and sawmills.
Kate Stubbs, MD at waste management company Interwaste, told Business Day that landfilling in SA was the predominant method of waste disposal, with about 90% of waste generated being disposed to landfill or in some cases, illegally dumped.
Exact statistics were unavailable, said Stubbs, but according to estimates the roughly 120-million tonnes of waste generated in SA per year equated to about R25bn worth of waste. The total recycling rate for all waste was only about 10% “which is why alternate waste management solutions and innovations are crucial”.
“SA has diminishing landfill airspace availability and as such, urgently needs to manage our waste more effectively,” Stubbs said. To address this issue, waste is being diverted from landfill disposal through various pieces of legislation and policies such as the National Environmental Management Waste Act and the National Waste Management Strategy.
With organic waste, she said, government has tabled a 100% ban from landfill by 2027 and the Western Cape has already introduced a 50% target for diverting 50% of organic waste from landfill by 2022.
However, this is proving to be easier said than done. The department of local government, environmental affairs and development planning says that while the 50% target for 2022 remains, not all municipalities were on track to reach the target, and the province was now at 32% diversion.
The circular economy project by Sanergy organic waste recycling plant in Nairobi, one of the largest circular economy projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, offers a solution that could be replicated in SA. However, as one of the project co-founders, David Auerbach says, such solutions do not come cheap and are often hampered by difficulties in obtaining finance for African start-ups.
Founded in 2011 Sanergy employs about 500 people and helps create 1,000 indirect jobs. Its recycling process is driven by Black Soldier Fly larvae, used to digest the roughly 200 tonnes of organic waste that is delivered to the plant per day.
They use food waste, waste from abattoirs, agricultural scraps such as avocado pulp, and kitchen waste from hotels and restaurants in Nairobi and are already able to collect about 15% of the organic waste generated in the city.
When the digestion process is complete the larvae are separated from the residue and processed into high-protein animal feed while the residue from the organic waste is turned into organic compost that is sold to farmers to fertilise their lands.
Some of the residue is compressed to make organic briquettes that serve as an energy source, similar to wood or coal, that can be used for cooking to reduce the need for deforestation. The briquettes, a cheaper option than coal or wood, can also be used for industrial heating and Sanergy uses it for all its own heating requirements, says Lwoyelo.
“It is a highly scalable and potentially profitable business, and it offers a waste management solution for growing cities,” says Auerbach.
But, he says, it not cheap to build a plant like this: building and setting up the plant in Nairobi cost about $8m. Accessing capital for projects such as these in Africa poses its own challenges, he says, because investors “see huge political risk in investing in these markets” — a sentiment that “often does not reflect the reality on the ground”.
In 2021, the business was chosen as a finalist in the inaugural round of The Earthshot Prize, a global initiative founded by William, Prince of Wales and The Royal Foundation, which aims to find scalable solutions to address the world’s biggest environmental problems and repair the planet over the next 10 years. For every year between 2021 and 2040, the prize will be awarded to winners in five categories, with each winner receiving a £1m grant to scale their work.
To improve the exposure to African projects The Earthshot Prize recently entered a media broadcast partnership with MultiChoice. This partnership is expected to raise awareness and understanding of The Earthshot Prize across Africa, supporting local finalists and highlighting their innovative solutions and mobilising communities to address sustainability challenges.
Hannah Jones, CEO of The Earthshot Prize, told Business Day that they worked with all the projects that were chosen as finalists to connect them with “talent and capital” needed to scale-up their operations.
It is still difficult for some investors “to believe innovation [like this] is happening in Africa”, which has made the exposure they received through the Earth Shot Prize very valuable.
Sanergy is now in the process of dramatically scaling up its operations from producing about 25 tonnes of animal feed per month to 100 tonnes. This will see fertiliser production double and then triple from 600 tonnes, and they will be increasing output of briquettes from 200 tonnes to 1,000 tonnes per month by mid-2023.
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