One Man's Waste. Another Man's Treasure

Clarkes Estate is bordered by Owen Road to the north, 35^th Avenue to the east and the non-operational railway that goes to Bellville and the city “round the back”. It is directly beneath the flight path of planes landing at Cape Town International Airport when the south Easter blows. It also has the reputation of been one of the most dangerous little suburbs in the Elsies River area. It too is afflicted by poverty, unemployment, drug addiction and violent crime.

I went early. Purposefully. The morning sunlight was going to give good light. The residents had not quite awakened yet and I was going to meet up with a City of Cape Town solid waste cleaning crew.

Why. Well the whole thing about illegal dumping has been a curiosity for me. No matter where you drive through predominantly impoverished areas you will encounter dirt and refuse that has been dumped on open fields or on the side of the road. Main roads through Elsies River, the strand road through Eerste River, an area like Dunoon all have this challenge. My question is, why. Why do people just simply dump their dirt and refuse in a public space.  

One must be careful to draw conclusions or find reasons. 

The obvious is these flats are very small and are often housing more than one family in a flat. The amount of refuse generated by one household would fill a two hundred litre wheelie bin in no time. It was mentioned to me this morning that each flat has a room where refuse is supposed to be kept for collection. These rooms are small and again probably not big enough to take the amount of refuse generated by families living in those flats. So I would assume the amount of refuse generated by the residents in these flats is a lot more than what can be kept in a normal refuse bin. 

The reality is for people that are “privileged” enough to live in the leafy suburbs like Thornton, refuse collection is a no brainer. The standing joke on our neighbourhood group every Tuesday is where “Dirty Harry” (the refuse truck} is. Add to that a new business opportunity that is increasingly popular and in demand is the bin cleaning service. We even have that. AND, refuse on streets is reported on the chat groups and acted on with an almost immediate response. I can’t remember when last our bin overflowed. It just never happens.

Anyway, back to my early morning escapade. The cleaning crew I met is based in the area. Every week they tackle an area that falls under the ambit of the local councilor. This morning it was the ward of Councilor Charles Esau, ward forty two. The team comprises about twelve to fifteen people. They bring with them lots of blue refuse bags, their tools like rakes and spades and a lot of courage and willingness to work hard. Men and women, some young and some not so young. One lady I spoke to is turning sixty this year. One young man just turned twenty one. They work hard. Everyday come rain or shine they are out there, cleaning the refuse the community dumped on the field. And as the supervisor pointed out: “we’ll clean today, tomorrow there will be fresh dirt that’s been dumped”.

Back to the why.  As I stood there and took pictures and spoke to them, the why became irrelevant. Reality is there are single mothers, sole breadwinners, people that need to work to put food on the table that are doing the dirty work. It really is a scenario where one man’s dirt is another man’s treasure. As the person said to me just before I left:. “If they don’t mess, we won’t have anything to clean.”  

For the record. I am not condoning illegal dumping. The city annually spends in the region of R 325 million in cleaning up illegally dumped waste. This alone should be reason to find a solution. In my mind that is money that can be used in researching and implementing a workable solution, whatever that may be.