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2.1 Topic a: Waste reduction

There are few formal systems of materials recovery through public agencies or the private sector in Africa. Instead, materials recovery, including source separation and recycling, is largely the domain of the informal sector. The activity is focused on components of economic and/or social value and occurs at several levels.

At the household level in low-income peri-urban areas, resource recovery begins with the reuse of plastic bags, bottles, paper, cardboard, and cans for domestic purposes. The rate of reuse in this instance is high, and these materials enter the waste stream only when they are no longer fit for domestic use. In high-income areas, recovery is carried out by domestic servants and/or wardens. Rather than reusing the materials directly, they sell their bottles, plastics, cardboard, and paper to middlemen or commercial centers that pay for these materials. The extent to which these transactions occur depends on the availability of marketable end uses for the materials.

Waste pickers provide informal collection services (see below, Collection and transfer) recovering additional material at the curb and at dumps and landfills. At landfill sites waste pickers may be organized into specialized groups with a permit to operate at the landfill. In other cases, they are individuals seeking to recover items for personal or commercial use.

Glass bottles are largely returned to their point of sale for direct reuse by the beverage industry. A deposit system has maintained a high return rate continent-wide. In the majority of cities, the glass content of the MSW stream would not be sufficient to support a glass recycling industry. Instead, the bottles not used for beverages are diverted from the waste stream and used as containers in the home. Other glass items are discarded with the rest of the MSW stream.

Where there is a market, plastics are recycled by waste pickers, some of whom have modular pelletizers to process the material prior to sale. The material is then sold to local plastic product manufacturers. These plants use granulated or pelletized virgin plastics for the manufacture of packaging material and extrudable utensils and furniture.

Waste pickers with rag-pulling equipment shred, clean, and reknit this material as all-purpose utility cloths for resale.

In South Africa a deposit system is used to encourage the return of bottles and tin and aluminum cans. In addition, specially marked receptacles are placed at greens depots for the drop off of bottles and cans. The country has a sizeable tin mining and processing industry, with a demand for the recycled material. Aluminum is processed for use in beverage containers.

In summary, the informal recovery and reuse of materials from the waste stream occurs at several levels in Africa. At the household level items are reused before entering the waste stream, thereby extending their useful life. Waste pickers also recover materials for personal and commercial purposes. The extent of commercial recycling of paper, metals, glass, and plastic depends on the presence of industrial or other end uses for these materials. While such industries may be found in some primary cities, they are largely absent in secondary cities and in rural areas. Even in those cases where they are found, they do not consistently stimulate recycling in their host cities. With few official statistics on MSW generation and recycling to point to continent-wide, it is not possible to generalize about an overall rate of waste reduction or materials recovery in Africa. As African cities move to upgrade their MSWM systems, obtaining these data will be vital to their design of well-integrated systems.

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• International Year of Forests
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• World Environment Day
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