As an individual, you can make a significant difference to Cape Town's waste problems - all in your own home, at no cost! By using the City of Cape Town's free household rubbish recycling service, Think Twice (before you throw away!), you can save up to nearly 2kgs of rubbish per day. At the moment, most of this (up to 80%) is unnecessarily sent to the city's rapidly filling landfills.

How Think Twice benefits Cape Town

Think Twice is helping to extend the life of the city's three remaining landfills,which are filling up fast - two of these only have space left for less than ten years of waste. Although a new regional landfill has been planned, this is situated over 40km further away than the current sites, and the increased distance will increase waste disposal costs considerably. So far, Think Twice, which was launched as a project in November 2007, has diverted 534 057kg of waste away from landfill (and that's just in Melkbosstrand, Bloubergstrand, Parklands and Pinelands).

Using Think Twice will also help prevent the carbon emissions that are generated in making items from new raw materials. It will also boost employment within the recycling industry. Many companies - ranging from one man operations to large multinationals - operate on the principle that 'one person's garbage is another's gold' by using waste materials in their manufacturing processes. Resin Roof Tiles, for example, uses the plastic that computer monitors are made from to manufacture South African National Standards (SANS) approved roof tiles. Nampak Tissue uses white waste office paper to make many of the tissue and toilet paper products that are found on supermarket shelves. Many community projects use waste materials to make saleable products, such as the Clover Mama Africa project, which creates useful items from the fabric off-cuts generated by the CapeStorm clothing factory.


How it works

Every week, the City's contractor, Waste Plan, will issue participating households with a clear bag. Simply throw your dry waste (clean and dry paper, cardboard, plastic bags, containers and bottles, glass and tin cans) into this bag, and place it in the upper portion of the bin on the usual collection day. Make sure that any waste that goes into the bag is clean and dry, remove caps from plastic containers, and flatten plastic and metal containers. All other waste that is not dry waste (i.e. polystyrene, tetrapacks (e.g. long life milk), wet paper and food waste should be placed in the lower portion of the bin). Garden refuse (leaves, grass cuttings etc.) as well as hazardous waste should be taken to the nearest drop-off site.

Waste Plan will collect the recyclables bag from the City and take them to a materials recovery facility in Maitland for reprocessing. Glass products are recycled by Consol; paper and cardboard products by Mondi; cans by Collect-a-Can and plastic products by Atlantic Plastics, Hosaf Fibres and Resintile Plastics.

Note: reprocessing facilities for tetrapack (long life milk cartons) and polystyrene packaging materials are available in Melkbosstrand, Bloubergstrand, Parklands and Pinelands, so if you're a resident of one of these areas, please place these into the recyclables bag as well.


If you would like to start recycling your household waste, contact:

Waste Plan (contractor): Bertie Lourens, e-mail: bertie@wasteplan.co.za
Council Area Manager: Tseko Magubane, tel: 021 400 5256
Solid Waste Call Centre: 086 045 6786