How to stay on the clean side of new waste bylaws

The new Waste Management Bylaws not only address issues pertaining to households, businesses and property developers but also some other thorny issues such as recycling and dumping.

With South Africans slowly but surely accepting recycling as a culture and all the derivative business opportunities that mushroom, the public should familiarise itself with the new by-laws.

The new Waste Management By-laws aim for the reduction, re-use, recycling and recovery of waste, which will cause less environmental harm than disposing thereof.

All generators and holders of waste therefore must ensure that waste is avoided or minimised, re-used, recycled or recovered (if it cannot be avoided) and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner. Any person undertaking this endeavour, including scrap-metal dealers, waste-treatment facilities and formalised recycling groups must make sure that their activities are less harmful to the environment than disposing of the waste.

No person may undertake to collect, transport, sort, store, re-use, recycle or recover waste with the intention of making a profit unless they are registered with the Council. This clearly leaves a question mark hanging over the hundreds of informal waste collectors that are seen on the roads every day.

The Council may prescribe that from a certain date, certain waste generators and collectors in a certain area must separate out various categories of waste, and must dispose of or treat the separated waste in the manner prescribed in the notice.

According to the new bylaws no person may burn waste, either in a public or private place, for the purpose of disposing of that waste, and every owner and occupier of a premises must keep it clean and free from any waste that is likely to cause a nuisance, harm to human health or damage to the environment.

The Council, or the owner of private land, must take reasonable steps to ensure that a sufficient number of suitable receptacles are provided for the public to discard of litter on any premises to which the public has access. They must ensure that every receptacle is maintained, suitably weighted or anchored, weather and animal proof, of a suitable size, placed in a convenient place and emptied and cleansed periodically.

As far as dumping is concerned, no person may leave or allow any article under his control to be left at a place with the intention of abandoning it or dump waste.

The Council may dispose of any article that has been chained or fastened to any pole, parking meter, or any other property of the Council.

The bylaws also have a section on the duty to prevent dumping.

The owner or occupier of any land must take reasonable measures to prevent the property from being used for dumping and to clean up all waste dumped there. They may be required to fence off the land or building, erect “no dumping” signs and implement security measures to monitor and enforce anti-dumping measures. If this fails the Council may take reasonable steps to prevent dumping and recover the costs from the owner or occupier.

Finally the new bylaws address the issue of littering. No person may cause litter, sweep any waste into a gutter, onto a road reserve or onto any public place, disturb or remove anything from any receptacle or allow any person under their control to do any of the above.

For more information click here.