Education on recycling 'vital'
2009-01-20 14:08
Johannesburg - South Africans need to be educated on the importance of recycling waste to help slow the release of methane gas into the atmosphere, the Institute of Waste Management said on Monday.
IWM president Vincent Charnley said there were 1 200 landfill sites which not only compounded the problem of asthma because of the quality of air, but also affected marine creatures as they were exposed to mercury.
"There needs to be a cohesive effort on the part of all the players in waste management to educate people about the crisis facing all of us if we don't curb our wasteful behaviour," Charnley said.
He said most of the waste was manufactured unnecessarily because South Africans bought impulsively, stocking their fridges with foodstuffs they never eat.
"An alarming percentage of what we throw away probably need not have been wasted to begin with and even more disturbingly, a lot of that is food," he said.
He said the 48 million South Africans generated an average of 550kg of waste per capita, leaving waste managers to handle 26.4 million tons of rubbish per annum.
"We need to get people excited about the many and varied career opportunities in waste management and make sure they know how serious a threat is posed by badly managed waste."
He said people needed to be made aware of "entrepreneurs in our country who make a living from recycling waste".
"We have an inventive population that not only manages waste to earn their keep, but there are those that manufacture sealable objects from plastic, tin cans and other waste items," Charnley said.
- SAPA