City welcomes the waste-to-energy initiatives by UCT

15 November 2024

STATEMENT BY THE CITY’S MAYORAL COMMITTEE MEMBER FOR URBAN WASTE MANAGEMENT, ALDERMAN GRANT TWIGG

The City’s Urban Waste Management Directorate is optimistic about the future of an innovative waste-to-energy project run by the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Centre for Bioprocess Engineering Research (CeBER). The project breaks down waste and converts it into an energy source.

This week, I visited UCT’s CeBER with the Urban Waste Management Portfolio Committee Chairperson, Cllr Brenda Hansen, to see their innovative project that converts waste into an energy source that can be used in households. It is great to see private initiatives that seek to address environmental challenges as well as to help the City reduce waste that is going to our landfills, especially food waste.

We highly welcome these initiatives from various sectors as they align with our new Waste Strategy, which focuses on using waste as a valuable resource, while keeping our communities clean. Converting food waste into energy plays a key role in the circular economy. Food waste generates greenhouse gases in our landfills, which poses huge environmental threats as they have global warming potential estimated to be 25 times higher than carbon dioxide.

As the City, we are also working towards generating energy from our landfills in Coastal Park, Vissershok and Bellville, with the Coastal Park project being in the advanced stages and set to start operating. When running at full capacity, it will produce approximately 15 000 000 kWh/year. This will be used primarily for powering operations and equipment at the landfill site, including the new recycling facility that is currently in the final stages of construction.

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Published by:
City of Cape Town, Media Office