Garbage plan: Johannesburg’s planned waste incinerator sparks outrage

A controversial plan by the City of Johannesburg to set up a R5 billion waste incinerator at the city’s largest and oldest landfill site has sparked resistance from environmental justice organisations and waste picker groups. 

The city sees its proposed waste-to-energy facility at the Robinson Deep landfill site in Turffontein, in south Johannesburg, as an efficient waste management solution for the landfill, which is fast running out of airspace. 

But municipal waste incinerators threaten the livelihoods of thousands of waste pickers because they use recyclables with “high calorific value” such as paper, cardboard and plastic as fuel, according to the South African Waste Pickers Association (Sawpa). The group held a peaceful protest against the planned facility earlier this month. 

This included a memorandum sent to Forestry, Fisheries and Environment Minister Dion George demanding that he scrap the city’s waste incineration proposal immediately and place a countrywide ban on municipal waste incineration. His department did not respond to the Mail & Guardian’s inquiries this week.

The city applied for an integrated waste management licence from the department, which was approved in September last year. The environmental justice organisation groundWork, launched an administrative appeal.

Burning waste in incinerators is a “false and unjust solution”, which “burns the livelihoods” of waste pickers, said Lefa Mononga, the coordinator of Sawpa. “The incinerators will take the recyclable materials also and they won’t only focus on organic waste.”

He said South Africa’s Waste Act stipulates that incineration must be the last resort in the waste management cycle after waste separation at source, materials recovery and recycling options have been tried and tested.

“For us, it’s a bad plan. How about we support waste pickers by giving them resources so they can push for separation at source … where they can go from house to house, to communities and grow awareness on the importance of separation at source and of how to handle waste in the right manner, rather than burning waste.”

Incinerators, sometimes referred to as waste-to-energy facilities, are “problematic” because they directly compete with the recycling sector. Waste companies often try to convince local governments to buy these technologies so they can “make profits from environmental harms”, according to Sawpa and groundWork.

“Local governments should be aware that incinerators are one of the most toxic, expensive, dangerous, and climate-polluting industries, tying them into capital intensive outlays and financially onerous maintenance agreements”, the groups said.

Johannesburg alone accounts for more than 20 000 waste pickers reliant on recycling but all these jobs will be “sacrificed for a few technical jobs”, they said.

“In South Africa we’re failing to do simple things like making sure that a landfill site is covered with soil once you dispose of the waste, that the leachate or the soup that comes from the waste is dealt with properly, so for an incinerator to say you’ll … monitor and enforce, it will be much more difficult and it will lead to so many challenges,” said Musa Chamane, the waste campaign manager at groundWork.

Even the most technologically advanced incinerators release thousands of pollutants that contaminate air, soil and water. Many of these pollutants enter the food supply and concentrate up through the food chain, the groups said. 

If the city proceeds with incineration, the air pollution and toxic ash that will be produced will fly in the face of South Africa’s commitments under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (Pops) and have costly health consequences for people living in the city. People living near incinerators are at particularly high risk of exposure to dioxins, which are harmful Pops, and other contaminants.

“The incinerator will be burning day and night, 24/7, for 365 days a year,” Mononga said. “What about people living close to that landfill site? They’ve got children; people will end up having asthma and who will pay for their medication?”

Chamane pointed out that private waste companies normally commit municipalities to contracts of providing so many tonnes of waste to the incinerator that they are operating. 

“The clauses in these agreements come with penalties should the municipality for some reason fail to supply the private company with the agreed quantity of waste. Incinerators have bankrupted municipalities.”

Waste-to-energy incinerators are a source of dirty energy, the groups said. If material is not recycled, more finite, fossil-fuel based resources need to be extracted to produce more goods, which drives climate change. 

Incineration also drives a climate changing cycle of “new resources pulled out of the earth, processed in factories, shipped around the world, and then wasted in incinerators and landfills”, Chamane said. 

On the reasons behind the department’s authorisation of the incinerator, spokesperson Peter Mbelengwa said: “This matter is part of an appeal that is still pending and we can therefore not make any input at this stage.”

The amount of waste being generated in Johannesburg continues to escalate because of significant growth, both in population as well as in the average income of the Gauteng residents, said Nthatisi Modingoane, spokesperson for the city.

“At this point in time, existing landfills are running out of airspace at a rapid rate and the development of new landfill sites is difficult due to a scarcity of suitable land within the jurisdiction of the CoJ [City of Johannesburg]. At the current trajectory, the remaining landfill airspace of the city will be depleted in the next two years”, Modingoane said.

The city generates more than 1.8 million tonnes of waste a year. The designed capacity of the waste-to-energy incineration is more than 500 000 tonnes a year, “which is about 28% of the total waste generated in the city”, he said.

“The waste to energy incineration plant is modelled such that it has a material recovery facility [MRF] for the recovery of valuable recyclable material before incineration. The MRF will generate over 400 permanent jobs, which will accommodate waste pickers.”

The plant will generate 27 megawatts of electricity. 

The cost estimate for the plant is about R5 billion, and it will be financed through public-private partnerships, grant funding and the city, Modingoane said.

Modingoane said the incineration of waste primarily emits carbon dioxide (CO2) and other pollutants, but significantly reduces the volume of waste. 

“Landfills are a significant source of methane, which is about 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 over a 100-year period. Modern incineration plants can also recover energy, converting waste into electricity and heat, which can offset some of the emissions.”

Landfilling technology does not capture energy unless a different process is implemented for example, methane harvesting which will require a separate investment. “Advanced incineration plants with pollution control technologies can significantly reduce these emissions, but older or poorly managed facilities can have severe local air quality impacts”, Modingoane said.

Landfills can leach hazardous chemicals and heavy metals into the soil and groundwater, potentially contaminating local water supplies, he said. “Incineration can reduce the volume of waste by up to 90%, leaving behind ash, which can sometimes be used in construction materials but often requires disposal in landfills”, he said.

Landfills generally do not recover resources effectively, although some landfills capture methane for energy. Materials in landfills are largely lost as potential resources, and the land they occupy cannot be used for other purposes until the landfill is closed and adequately managed for post-closure use.

Both waste incineration and landfilling have significant environmental effects, but they manifest differently. “Incineration is generally better for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and minimising waste volume, but it can produce harmful pollutants if not properly controlled. Landfilling has a higher potential for greenhouse gas emissions (mainly methane) and long-term environmental risks, especially concerning groundwater contamination,” Modingoane said.

He said that most progressive megacities have replaced landfilling with incineration, while “achieving the highest levels of recycling”. 

“The city is mindful of the socio-economic impact and the role played by the waste pickers is diverting the valuable material from landfills. The city can reassure the waste pickers that the project will not have any negative impact on their livelihoods but will rather enhance efficiency in their operation through the MRF,” he said.

Chamane maintained that waste incineration is a false solution because it muscles waste pickers out of the economy. Recycling creates 10 to 20 times more jobs than incinerators, which require huge capital investment, but offer relatively few jobs when compared to recycling.

“We are a country that has scarce jobs; we’ve got more than 90 000 people making a living through recycling but if an incinerator is introduced, you’re only going to create a few technical jobs, which will also employ foreign people.”

The solution lies in zero waste approaches to waste and resource management, which include reduction, reuse, recycling and composting. These are cost-effective and safer options that generate jobs while protecting the climate and the environment.

In 2017, community-based organisations together with groundWork thwarted plans by the 

Drakenstein municipality to build a municipal waste incinerator, with the municipality since adopting zero waste projects, he said.

“Incinerators displace waste pickers and compete with recycling and you need to choose which one is better. The ash that remains as a result of incineration is really toxic and needs a hazardous landfill site to dispose of the ash and these hazardous sites are expensive to dispose of as compared to general landfills.

“If Joburg proceeds and builds this incinerator, other landfills in Gauteng will use it to ‘treat’ their waste. It’s not only the Robinson Deep waste pickers that are going to be affected but the whole of Gauteng,” said Chamane. 

Mononga noted that the project runs the risk of setting a precedent elsewhere in the country. “Some of the municipalities, they will just look at the City of Johannesburg’s incinerator and think that that is a solution for waste in every municipality.”

Mbelengwa added that the department had not been contacted by any other municipality at this stage for such a project. “Once a municipality decides to embark on a project of this nature, they would engage with our department to determine the waste management licensing requirements.”