The City of Johannesburg is fast running out of landfill space to dump the tonnes of trash it collects on a daily basis.
Added to this, the city's contracted refuse collector, Pikitup, is plagued by an ineffective fleet that breaks down, leading to a high overtime bill of R31.84m which has been directly linked to fleet breakdowns.
The figures were contained in the entity's performance assessment report for quarter one of the 2021/2022 financial year that looked into Pikitup's overall performance.
Pikitup provides waste management services to Joburg's 1.4m formal households and 260 informal settlements on a weekly basis.
Pikitup board chairman William Mathamela wrote that the city's waste minimisation and recycling programmes had not performed well in the quarter under review.
“There is a critical need for waste reduction in that the city's existing landfills are running out of airspace at a very fast rate. It is acknowledged that the waste minimisation and recycling programmes have not performed well in this quarter, and these will be upscaled further,” he said.
Pikitup disposes of waste at four of its landfill sites namely Goudkoppies, Marie Louise, Ennerdale and Robinson which are all in the south of the City of Johannesburg.
It also uses airspace from two privately owned landfills, namely Chloorkop and Mooiplaats.
All waste collected by the northern region depots is then disposed of at the privately owned landfills.
According to the report, a total of 363,859 tonnes was collected in quarter one with the highest contribution coming from refuse collection and illegal dumping.
“The City of Johannesburg is continuously confronted with the challenge of illegal dumping. This dumping takes place largely in informal settlements in open spaces, on street corners in the inner city and at concrete litter bins in the suburban areas.
“There is also ongoing illegal dumping of builders’ rubble by community members not wanting to apply for permits to dump at landfills as well as companies not wanting to comply with waste management requirements. There is a need for the intervention of the law enforcement agencies to assist with the enforcement of the waste management bylaws,” the report read.
Pikitup has a fleet complement of 105 refuse collection rounds (RCR) vehicles with a high volume of breakdowns and unreliability.
It needs an additional 151 specialised fleet unit. The shortfall of the fleet is currently supplemented with an average of 156 ad hoc RCR compactors daily.
Johannesburg Property Owners and Managers Association (JPOMA) general manager Angela Rivers said landfill space has always been a problem.
“First of all, there’s always been issues with trucks breaking down which is purely negligent on the operators. If these were serviced, there wouldn’t breakdowns as often as they happen,” she said.
She said some of PJOMA's members had outsourced Pikitup services to private companies because they were not being serviced.
“Despite not being serviced, they were still billed at the end of the month because they've got bins. Now, it works out much cheaper for them,” she said.
Environment and infrastructure services MMC Michael Sun told Sowetan there was a direct correlation to the population and refuse management.
“The more people move to city, the more refuse will be collected and the more strain on the fleet,’ he said.
Sun said the municipality had already identified a new landfill site with negotiations under way.
“This is a privately owned landfill,” he said.
“It’s difficult to build new landfill because the provincial government grants licences. We can’t simply say we’re building a new landfill on our land because you have a process of application for a licence and environmental impact assessment reports have to be done. At the moment, only private landfills are available,” he said.
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