Author name: Nicole Felix

At the beginning of May, the Western Cape Veterinary Services announced the detection of Avian influenza at two commercial farms within the Western Cape. Since the announcement, approximately 550 000 chickens have been culled and many more eggs destroyed to prevent the further spread of the virus. This leaves the poultry sector with thousands of kilograms of high-risk – hazardous organic waste that needs to be carefully disposed of and treated. BiobiN South Africa discusses the importance of bio-secure waste management within the poultry sector to safeguard livestock, food production and to prevent further contamination.

With ambitious organic waste diversion goals, the City of Cape Town has implemented various regulatory strategies to encourage businesses and residents to minimise and divert more waste. One of these strategies is Waste Minimisation Clubs (WMC). This is a collective of people within a residential or business cluster that take ownership of the area’s waste minimisation and diversion initiatives. BiobiN South Africa looks at how composting units are a key component to make a WMC viable.

Saturday, 22 April 2023 is celebration as Global Earth Day to recognise the importance of our ecosystems, biodiversity, conservation and sustainability as a whole. The theme for Earth Day 2023 is ‘Investing in our Planet’.

When we start to look at the food and organic waste stream as a secondary resource that has economic value, we change our perception of this waste type as something burdensome that will be expensive to landfill. When we start to consider that food and organic waste is actually recyclable, we can see that there is an entire economic value chain for this waste stream. The impeding organic waste landfill ban in the Western Cape in 2027 is also accelerating the development of the organic waste secondary market and with this development, more business are implementing ways to extract value from their organic waste stream.

To be able to report on your waste management performance, the first step is to draft and implement a waste management strategy with waste reduction and diversion targets. There is no one-size fits all waste management strategy; establishing targets is dependent on the nature of waste streams, volumes, recycling and disposal infrastructure.