There is a pressing need for business owners in the Central City to develop and implement their own waste removal plans, especially if they generate more waste than can be collected by the City of Cape Town and other service providers on a daily basis. This is one of the messages of the Cape Town Central City Improvement District’s (CCID) “It’s time to come clean” anti-litter campaign that has been rolled out in the CBD.
At the heart of the campaign is not only the enormous amount of illegal waste and litter collected by the CCID from the streets of Cape Town every single day, but the huge cost involved.
Says CCID CEO Tasso Evangelinos: “The CCID sweeps and picks up, on average, 2 400 kg of litter from the streets in town seven days a week at a cost of approximately R30 000 per day, which amounts to nearly R11-million per year. This is an enormous waste of money.” He says this is in addition to the mass waste removal (through the emptying of black wheelie and green street-pole municipal bins) done by the CCID’s primary partner, the City of Cape Town.
“We collect bags dumped illegally, litter spilling out of black wheelie bins and general rubbish in the streets and have to contend with things like fluorescent bulbs and tubes, dirty Styrofoam containers, big cardboard boxes.”
However, certain Central City businesses, especially in the food sector, generate too much waste for the frequency of their rubbish collection “but they don’t want to increase the frequency as it will cost more money”. “They then dump their excess waste somewhere else or let their bins overflow, which creates more problems such as an increase in rodents leading to health-related issues,” says Tasso.
BUSINESSES NEED TO CONFRONT THE CHALLENGE
Central City businesses and residents need to confront the challenge of dealing with their waste or the consequences will be costly. If Capetonians continue to litter at the pace they’re doing now, the city will run out of landfill space with all ratepayers and businesses “paying the price in increased rates and taxes”.
“There is a huge need to create awareness around reducing waste through recycling and reusing certain items, and cutting back on others, especially fast-food containers that cannot be recycled,” Tasso says. “We cannot continue to generate the amount of waste we are currently generating as our landfills are reaching capacity. Where will the waste go once these are full? We will have to create alternative landfill space far from the city and the price of removing waste to landfill will go up exorbitantly,” he points out.
RESIDENTS MUST DISPOSE OF WASTE RESPONSIBLY
Richard Beesley, manager of CCID Urban Management, says the campaign plays a crucial role in raising public awareness about keeping downtown Cape Town clean. This year’s campaign reiterates the “It’s time to come clean” message that the CCID has been promoting for the last two years. “We are once again repeating it and will do so until people get the message loud and clear,” says Richard. “The responsibility for a clean CBD starts with the people who use it every day and they need to dispose of their litter appropriately.”
With the 2019 campaign, the CCID is therefore once again targeting illegal dumping, general littering and refuse, and cigarette-butt waste. Richard says the main challenges remain littering and illegal dumping.
While the campaign highlights illegal littering in the CBD - through colourful, in-your-face posters with slogans including Eish! My Bra. Stop littering neh and strategic activations involving branded wheelie bins - it also draws attention to the excellent work done by the CCID’s Urban Management department in delivering top-up services to those of its primary partner, the City of Cape Town.
Apart from sweeping and litter-removal, Urban Management also does minor road and pavement repairs, graffiti removal, gardening and other beautification projects.
Richard says while the work of the CCID’s teams is commendable, the aim of the #KeepItClean campaign is to bring about behavioural change. “We would like people to ‘come clean’ and become litter-conscious so we can get to a point where campaigns like this aren’t needed anymore,” he says.
IMAGES: Ed Suter; Scott Arendse, CCID online coordinator