Good afternoon, hon Chair and hon members and guests. Over the past 20 years South Africa has made great strides in addressing the key issues, requirements and problems experienced in waste management.
President Jacob Zuma reminded us that before 1994, South Africa was a very funny country. South Africa is now emerging from a period of unsustainable and inequitable development that not only threatened the livelihoods and degraded the quality of life of a large proportion of the population, but was also responsible for environmental degradation.
In order to move towards development that is economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, all sectors of society have to undergo a number of important transitions.
Hon Chairperson, it is true that one person's waste can now become another person's valuable raw materials. Also, with changing technologies, availability and cost of original input materials, the demand for or need to use recovered waste is changing too.
The gold extraction process used a century ago on the Witwatersrand mines, for example, was relatively inefficient when measured against today's technology. The result is that many, many waste and sand dumps have now become very valuable assets for remining.
The question then is: When is waste really waste? The exact definition of waste is, however, the topic of an ongoing debate because of the increasing global trend to reduce, reuse, rework, recycle and recover so-called waste products.
As the population gradually grows and society progresses, the generation of waste becomes an unavoidable phenomenon. This is further complicated by the complex waste streams fuelled by technology advancements and consumerist lifestyles.
Waste management is central to the improvement of the standard of living. It has the potential to eradicate poverty through the job creation opportunities that exist in waste collection, recycling and other forms of waste management in general.
The Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa stated that over 42 million cubic metres of general waste is generated every year across the country, with the largest proportion coming from Gauteng, at 42%.
In addition, more than 5 million cubic metres of hazardous waste is produced every year, mostly in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, because of the concentration of mining activities and fertilizer production in these provinces.
The average amount of waste generated per person per day in South Africa is 0,7 kg. This is closer to the average produced in developed countries - namely 0,73 kg in the UK and 0,87 kg in Singapore - than to the average in developing countries, such as 0,3 kg in Nepal.
By far the biggest contributor to the solid-waste stream is mining waste at 72,3%, followed by pulverised fuel ash at 6,7%, agricultural waste at 6,1%, urban waste, 4,5% and sewage sludge, 3,6%.
With regard to waste management since 2009, a remarkable yet gradual policy shift has been made with the introduction of the National Environmental Management: Waste Act, Act 59 of 2008.
This Act serves as one of the catalysts aimed at fast-tracking the implementation of integrated waste management systems. It is being implemented through the National Waste Management Strategy, NWMS, which was approved by Cabinet in 2011. Waste management in South Africa faces numerous challenges, including the growing volumes of waste generated due to economic growth, population growth and the complexity of waste streams generated.
The purpose of this Bill is to amend the Act in order to substitute certain definitions, clarify the spheres of government required to compile an integrated waste management plan, and provide for the exclusion of the provincial department responsible for waste management in the compilation of an industry waste management plan. It requires the MEC responsible for waste management to act in concurrence with the Minister when requesting persons to compile and submit industry waste management plans.
Lack of sufficient recycling infrastructure, reclamation systems and insufficient funding mechanisms further add to the complexity of this composite challenge. Central to these challenges is a need for continued co- ordination and sharing of resources amongst the three spheres of government, as well as industry and civil society, in order to make momentous changes in the waste management sector.
We have a good story to tell, following our assessment of unlicensed waste disposal sites in the country. The ANC government supported the licensing of 56 sites in the 2012-13 financial year. The government will support a total of 122 sites, and a further 80 sites will be funded by the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agency, Misa. We are looking at eradicating the backlog of unlicensed sites by the end of March 2014.
The waste sector has been identified as one of the critical sectors, with the potential to contribute substantially to the generation of jobs in the green economy. It is in the light of this that the Department of Environmental Affairs is increasingly expanding its programmes in job creation and enterprise development programmes in the waste sector.
As leaders in local government, you are no strangers to the fact that waste management is at the core of service delivery. Therefore it is important that the state improves its capacity to deliver waste services. This is not only to meet service delivery needs, but also to provide dignity and quality of life to our people. [Time expired.]