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Johanneburg recycling plan upsets Waste Pickers

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The South African Waste Pickers’ Association has expressed its dissatification over the City of Johannesburg’s announcement that from this Sunday residents will be required to separate recyclable material from their waste before disposing of it.

The City says it is running out of space for rubbish.

Association Chairperson Simon Mbatha says what the city is doing is to take bread away from the waste-pickers’ mouths because it will only benefit those who are awarded the tenders.

“They are playing double standards to the public and to the media because they will always say we working with waste pickers. But if you look into the details of the contracts, they have awarded to do separation at source, that’s where you would see that they are not working with waste pickers because they disempower our waste pickers in the access of waste,” says Mbatha.

Johannesburg’s MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Nico De Jager says currently only 10% of the waste in Johannesburg is recycled and the other 90% goes to landfill sites.

He says they want to reduce waste going to the landfill sites by another 20%.

“This is basically how we will do it. We are distributing two bags to residents and that’s a blue bag and a clear bag. What goes into the bag? First of all paper, newspapers magazines, anything paper. Please not a pizza box, pizza boxes are contaminated with oil and not milk cartoons. Then we putting in plastic.”

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