Most of SA’s landfill sites are “lawless”, posing significant risks to public health and possibly resulting in pollution of air, soil and underground and surface water.
This is according to a new report published by the civil rights group AfriForum.
Only 22% of 169 landfill sites countrywide surveyed by AfriForum earlier this year complied substantially with minimum standards.
In most cases there is “absolutely no access control” or safety and security measures in place and no inspections are done of the kind of waste dumped at the sites. As a result, hazardous waste is being dumped at sites licensed only for general waste.
AfriForum said due to inadequate management of their landfill sites, “many municipalities no longer exercise any control over landfill sites, meaning there is basically lawlessness on these sites”. The void is then filled by informal recyclers, who exercise control over the sites.
In most cases, municipal officials don’t know what the remaining capacity of their landfill sites are or the rate at which they are filling up, which results in poor planning.
The organisation suggested partnerships between municipalities and private companies, as well as communities, were the only way to rectify the situation.
AfriForum has already established its own waste removal service in Bloemfontein, which has been providing a service to residents since 2021 and recently acquired its own garbage truck.
Some of its branches have initiated recycling in their local communities, and at schools and businesses, and the organisation is busy developing a private recycling service, which has already achieved great success in Groenkloof and Centurion in Pretoria.
“Without reinventing the wheel, the private service providers’ experience, expertise and proven track record of compliance with legal requirements can help to effectively operate and manage landfill sites,” the organisation says.
With a sample representing 31% of the country’s 544 landfill sites, AfriForum says it can draw accurate conclusions about the state of the country’s landfill sites from its survey. It will hand a copy of its findings to the director-general for waste management at the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment (DFFE) for further discussion and co-operation.
AfriForum will also make the information available to communities to arm them with knowledge to participate meaningfully in municipalities’ planning processes to ensure adequate budgets for waste management.
The survey shows that 131 of the 169 landfill sites did not even reach the 80% compliance level AfriForum set as a “pass” rate.
The minimum standards “only look at the core aspects of a landfill site’s design and management, which aims to limit harmful pollution and dangers that may affect the public’s health and safety. Landfill sites’ compliance with 80% or more of the audit requirements is therefore not supposed to be an unattainable goal but rather serves as a non-negotiable standard that must be met,” said AfriForum.
The province with with the highest average compliance score is Gauteng, where five of the nine sites (56%) met the pass rate, followed by the Western Cape, with 19 of 37 sites (51%). These are the only two provinces where the majority of landfill sites passed the audit.
More than 90% of landfill sites in the Free State, Limpopo, the Northern Cape and Mpumalanga didn’t pass the audit. The number of sites in each of these provinces that did not comply with the audit pass rate are as follows:
• 21 of the 22 sites (95%) audited in the Free State.
• 13 of the 14 sites (93%) audited in Limpopo.
• 23 of the 25 sites (92%) audited in the Northern Cape.
• 21 of the 23 sites (91%) audited in Mpumalanga.
AfriForum explained that landfill sites can be unsafe, noisy, smelly and visually unattractive. Vehicles collecting or dumping waste can pose safety risks and spontaneous combustion and fires on the sites can pollute the air.
Pollution on the site can enter surrounding natural water sources and penetrate the soil. People can become ill if they inhale the polluted air, drink toxic water or eat food that has been grown in poisoned soil.
The organisation said people can develop cancer or asthma and other lung and chest diseases, birth defects may occur and children growing up near landfill sites can show stunted growth and be sickly, making effective management of landfill sites of the utmost importance.
AfriForum said waste removal is a municipal function, but municipalities “are failing miserably in this task due to mismanagement and a lack of accountability for officials failing to fulfil their obligations. This mismanagement includes the appointment of incompetent staff, misappropriation of funds, neglect of infrastructure and a lack of continuous monitoring to take early preventive steps.”
It said the situation requires strict enforcement of legislation on all landfill sites, the development of incentive mechanisms to divert recyclable waste away from landfill sites to save space and acknowledgment of communities’ needs regarding waste management.
This is because poor service delivery leads to illegal dumping and unfairly financially penalises law-abiding citizens who make use of alternative paid services.
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