Community Empowerment

Sort and Keep Recyclable Waste at Home for Waste Pickers

The level of consumption either of food, drinks and any other perishable during the current lockdown has increased per household and the amount of waste from residences may also extremely increase, while the waste from the industries and firms decrease. This is primarily because some residents who are traditionally at work during are now at home.

This is as many industries and firms have adopted a new way of working, resulting in some employees working from home or working schedules with varying intervals to avoid overcrowding in the workplaces.

As such, the City of Ekurhuleni is introducing waste separation at source in various areas to minimise waste that ultimately reach the landfill sites. However, informal waste pickers recover more recyclable waste than it is recovered at the landfill sites or any other area of the chain of waste collection.

In order to reduce the amount of waste to be collected, thus sparing the landfill sites of more waste to handle and illegal waste dumping, household are advised to: 

  • separate the recyclable waste from the non-recyclable waste
  • place the non-recyclable waste in the 240L bin provided by the city
  • clean recyclable waste and place it in a separate bag to hand it over to recyclable waste pickers.

A recyclable waste picker, or small and medium recycling enterprises will appreciate the waste as they derive income from it.