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CHAPTER ONE
The Marianhill Landfill Conservancy is a unique initiative by the eThekwini Municipal Area (EMA) that is both a waste disposal site and an area of natural beauty. Top: Photo courtesy of Landfillconservancies.com Bottom: ©BBC World Service. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.
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migrating informal recycling and re-use to formalized operations, creating niches and employment along value chains that can be created by increasing integration between the urban waste sector and others. The global market for waste-to-energy was valued at USD 19.9 billion (2008) and sector growth of 30 per cent was projected for 2014.161 Composting facilities in cities such as Johannesburg are already overloaded. Building capacity to recycle solid urban waste in Africa requires measures that go beyond centralized composting. Diversifying to local, mediumscale waste markets can help migration towards (close to) zero-waste urban footprints if solid waste is reused. High energy costs may, however, prove prohibitive to small and medium operators and such operations must be coupled to lower-cost energy provision. Improved waste collection can also be achieved in sites that are difficult to access. In Curitiba (Brazil), for instance, the “green swap programme” exchanges recyclable wastes (glass and plastics) for food in informal settlements.162 Socially-sensitive approaches to waste management may be necessary locally in African cities to complement larger-scale waste infrastructure. African urban landfill practices also require serious attention as these are critical to human health and reliable
ecosystem functioning. The Mariannhill Landfill, near eThekwini (South Africa), was registered as a national conservancy in 2002.163 The facility receives over 450 tons of urban waste daily from which it produces electricity, treats and reuses leachates164 as well as extracting toxic substances through artificial wetlands. In Kampala (Uganda) the Kasubi-Kawala neighbourhood entered into a partnership to recycle neighbourhood waste, of which 75 per cent was organic, into animal feed, compost and alternative fuel.165 The Coptic Christian Zabbaleen in Cairo have traditionally collected the city’s waste and now operate at scales large enough to bridge international price variations of recycled glass and plastic. The social value of focused waste management projects, such as these examples above, is critical to catalysing behavioural change necessary for Africa to move towards future urban zero-waste profiles. Policies, governance structures, infrastructures and technologies adopted at the city scale play key roles in stimulating the transition and influence behaviour at large as well as at local scales. African city governments may be required to enter into partnerships, for example, with the private sector or with regional and international donors to achieve the largescale actions necessary to speed up the transition.