Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit (MIIU)
Johannesburg, South Africa

The City of Johannesburg, with financing from the South African Development Bank (Municipal Infrastructure Investment Unit) and the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, contracted with DSM Environmental Services and Kwezi/VE (a South African firm) for a nine-month $270,000 project to assist with analysis and implementation of a comprehensive, city wide recycling collection system. While an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 scavengers collect recyclables from the street and at the landfill face for sale to buy back centers and brokers, plastics, paper and glass manufacturers in Guateng Province need additional material. DSM was responsible for analyzing three options for increasing the recovery of recyclables:

• Organization of the scavengers into a system that results in a doubling of the quantity of material collected;
• Development of a traditional curbside collection system for recyclables based on separation at the household into a "wet" and a "dry" fraction;
• Sorting of loads of mixed waste at "dirty" MRFs located at each of the five Johannesburg landfills.

Work included: sampling and analysis of household wastes to determine the composition and quantities of recyclables; focus groups with households and business owners representing differing economic strata concerning willingness to separate recyclables; surveys of the informal collectors to determine methods to improve collection; and development of city-wide materials generation and recovery estimates for use by industry seeking additional recyclable materials.

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