Environmental Institute Supports Waste Managemnt in Africa
By Shout-Africa – ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
The Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa (IWMSA) say it supports the need to keep industry and members abreast of the way that waste is disposed of. IWMSA is firm about strengthening activity of Re-use, Recycle and Recover as a way to manage waste.
In a press statement released today, th organisation lammented that with 125 known landfill sites on record, only 83 have been authorised (66%). “This has partly been due to the lack of regular auditing, and lack of political support at local government levels and also factoring in serious non-compliance and informal scavenging. A major
reason is, too, the lack of funding and advanced knowledge of integrated waste management at local municipal level to manage such facilities.”
The Landfill Interest Group (LIG), an independent specialist interest group, supported by the IWMSA, believes in protecting the environment and people of Southern Africa from the adverse effects of poor waste management, and uses this as their mission statement.
“The new Waste Act has a myriad of new strict landfill licensing laws that will be implemented. A new Waste Information System will also be implemented at a Provincial and National level, with strict fines being levied by government. These fines include R20 000 for failure by any person to provide information on Industry Waste Management Plans, to R10 Million and/or 10 years jail for anyone who endangers the health of others by contaminating land or cause nuisance by the unauthorised disposal of waste.”
The LIG backs the Waste Act in the beliefs that to regulate waste management in a proactive way, we need to minimise our consumption of natural resources, as well as recover, reduce and recycle as much as we can to ease the strain on our landfill sites and to extend their life as far as possible. This way, the storage and treatment of waste can be better monitored, and ecological disasters avoided.
The IWMSA will be hosting their International Waste conference, WasteCon 2010, at Emperors Palace Convention Centre, South Africa from 04 – 08 October. The theme will be “What is your Waste footprint?”. The key note speaker from the UK, Mr Howard Robinson, who is the Technical Director of SKM Enviros, will be focusing on “What is the future of landfills?”.
