 |
The WasteWise Campaign |
What is the WasteWise Campaign?
 
The WasteWise Campaign is an action plan by the City
of Cape Town to clean up the Cape Metropolitan Area
and keep it clean. The Campaign aims to raise awareness
about the negative effects of poor waste management
and illegal waste disposal, and to encourage us, the
people of Cape Town, to take ownership of our environment
and work together with the local authority to solve
these problems.
WasteWise forms part of the Mess Action Campaign (MAC
21), a five-year plan by the City of Cape Town for tackling
the waste crisis in the Cape Metropolitan Area.
THE WASTEWISE CAMPAIGN IS
AN URGENT CALL TO ACTION: A CALL FOR ALL THE PEOPLE
OF CAPE TOWN TO GET INVOLVED AND MAKE OUR CITY SAFE,
CLEAN AND ECONOMICALLY SOUND.
WasteWise has three main components:
Education
component
Legal
and enforcement component
Operations
component
These three components are closely linked to ensure
optimum impact e.g. enforcement blitzes will be accompanied
wherever appropriate by public education.
Who runs the WasteWise Campaign?
The WasteWise Campaign is an initiative of the City
of Cape Town, but is being run in partnership with:
- Civil
society (environmental and community organisations,
and every Capetonian)
- The business
community (industry and commerce as waste generators,
business associations and sponsors)
- Implementation
agencies such as the Fairest Cape Association.
Why does Cape Town need the WasteWise Campaign?
The people of Cape Town are facing a waste crisis:
- Each year
we generate 1.8 million tons of waste.
- Every week
we produce 1000 tons of litter & illegally dumped
waste: enough to
cover seven soccer fields.
We are simply running out of space for waste. There
are only six landfill sites in Cape Town, and these
are filling up fast: four will have to be closed within
the next five years. No new site has been identified
within 100km of the city.
Another problem is the litter and illegally dumped
waste that doesn't even get to the landfills. Removing
this mess costs upward of R135 million a year, which
is four to seven times more than the cost of disposal
within the regular systems.
Poor waste management and illegal waste disposal are
linked to several of our most serious social problems.
As waste increasingly degrades our unique environment,
it causes health hazards, threatens our tourism industry,
deters foreign investors, and accelerates urban decay
and associated lawlessness. And the money spent on trying
to control the growing mountain of waste should be going
towards improving services and creating jobs.
Learn More: Why Waste Matters
Why can't we use the clean-up projects that are already
in place?
It is not intended that the WasteWise Campaign replace
existing waste management projects. Rather, it is designed
to enhance current projects by:
- Providing
relevant structures and organisations with a "top-up"
of resources.
- Facilitating
communication and co-ordination among the different
structures and organisations
Several “clean-up” campaigns have been run
previously by City of Cape Town administrations, voluntary
organisations and institutions such as schools. These
campaigns have been valuable, but their benefits tended
to be short-term due to lack of ongoing input and follow-up.
Also, the different projects were not co-ordinated for
maximum impact.
In addition, enforcement of dumping and littering by-laws
has been ineffective. The penalties have seldom been
severe enough to prevent repeat offences.
The result has been that the City has not been able
to maintain a sufficiently efficient service for preventing
and clearing litter and illegal dumping.
The WasteWise Campaign aims to achieve long-term change.
Previous campaigns tended to focus on temporary "solutions"
to the symptoms of poor waste control. By changing perceptions
and behaviour regarding waste through a sustained campaign
over several years, WasteWise hopes to effect a lasting
cure to the problem.
What does the WasteWise Campaign want to achieve?
The objectives of the WasteWise Campaign are to:
- Control illegal dumping, littering and environmental
degradation by providing an effective level of enforcement
and prosecution, with appropriate penalties.
- Raise public awareness, through the media and education,
about our waste crisis; and encourage Capetonians
to participate in clean-ups, waste reduction, and
reporting litterers and illegal dumpers.
- Put effective laws in place to control illegal waste
disposal and environmental degradation, and ensure
that offenders are brought to book and appropriately
punished.
- Provide resources to clean up all illegal dumpsites,
and co-ordinate the different structures involved
in managing Cape Town's waste so that they can work
together for maximum impact.
- Ensure that the campaign links its efforts to the
Cape Town Unicity priorities of crime, AIDS, tourism
and services.
- Establish effective relationships between communities,
representatives of all stakeholders and the Unicity
administration to enhance the campaign's objectives.
- Attract and secure funding for the campaign, which
will be redistributed to priority areas.
- Set up an administrative system to ensure adequate
funding, cost controls, and communication and co-ordination
of efforts among all stakeholders.
- Set up a section 21 Company and establish a franchise
arrangement so that local communities can access WasteWise
resources to maintain a clean environment.
- Establish Cape Town and her citizens as role models
for good waste management, so that other cities will
be eager to follow our example.
|
