Use opportunity offered by rubbish

Research by the UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research has found that, in Ireland and the UK, the average person creates over 869 kg and over 603 kg of rubbish a year respectively. To deal with this, households in the UK and Ireland are expected to separate their rubbish, leaving it in appropriate colour-coded bins for collection and recycling.

Comedian Jack Dee categorises the current approach to recycling in the UK as more like filing than waste management. Nonetheless, and despite some criticism that not all recycled waste is used, the recycling drive has contributed to a shift in the amount of waste in landfills.

In 2000, some 90% of waste ended up in landfills in the UK. In 2008 just under 60% of rubbish was deposited there. This is a significant change, but still behind countries like the Netherlands and Austria, where over 60% of rubbish is recycled.

In South Africa, formal recycling schemes are less common. I have noticed that most South Africans who visit us in Belfast are perplexed by our recycling rituals.

In the majority of areas in South Africa, if you want to recycle your waste, the onus is on you to sort your rubbish and then take it to the appropriate site. Most local councils do not collect rubbish, or demand that rubbish is sorted at home and left in differently 
marked receptacles for collection. As the South African website, Going Green SA, notes, recycling in South Africa “can sometimes be quite an effort”.

However, I would not want to paint a picture of Europe as being superior when it comes to recycling or reducing waste. When plastic bags were sarcastically referred to as the ‘national flower’ in South Africa, in 2003, government moved swiftly to charge for them. South Africa was one of the first countries to do this. The UK has still not adopted this practice.

Effective recycling can also rely on a degree of privilege, that is, having regular refuse collections, space to have multiple bins, running water to clean containers and mass education campaigns. The need to recycle can also be influenced by the amount of material thrown away, in the first place. The developed world produces masses of refuse with its ravenous consumer culture and tendency to dispose of goods that might be reused in other countries.

Households in the UK throw away about 6,7-million tons of food every year. A study carried out by the University of Arizona’s Garbage Project, which analysed 250 000 lb of refuse, found that it was paper, and not disposable diapers or fast-food packaging, that dominated landfill sites. Paper is largely used by industry and consumed by the better-off.

The poor are often the best ‘recyclers’. In fact, in South Africa, the more you look, the more you realise people are recycling all the time. Squatter camps are built from recycled waste. Toys and ornaments common in flea markets are often made of recycled wire, glass and bottle tops, and old machine parts, food and clothes never go to waste.

So the problem is twofold.

The developed world has more entrenched recycling awareness and better facilities, especially in countries like Holland and Germany. However, this is often limited to sorting rubbish for recycling. A more developed consciousness around reducing disposable waste by buying less and more appropriately, and reusing goods, is needed, especially in the UK and the US.

In the developing world, the recycling consciousness needs to take root, and adequate formal facilities to deal with this need to be put in place. At the same time, the poor’s ability to develop informal and imaginative processes for reusing waste needs to be harnessed. The garbage business in South Africa remains a vast, untapped resource. Creatively using rubbish could be another aspect of building the economy and creating jobs, with the positive spin-off of environmental protection.

This article by Brandon Hamber was published on Polity and in the Engineering News on  21 August 2009. as part of the column "Look South". Copyright Brandon Hamber.

Crabwalk by Günter Grass

I recently read Crabwalk by Günter Grass, the Nobel Prize winner. This book once again grapples with Germany's past and is superb. The book focuses on the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945, a German cruise ship used as a refugee carrier. Some 9,000 people were killed in the attack by a Russian sub. In addition, to telling the story of this disaster, the book focuses on the lives of people affected by it in modern day Germany. The book essentially focuses on cycles of 'victimhood' and the way victimisation (or perceived victimisation) turns into violence decades later. A compelling book that delves into the heart of contemporary Germany and the contradictions within it. I think it is a must for anyone interested in how countries deal with their past and how contemporary problems arise when this process is not properly completed. For more information on the book link directly to it at Amazon US UK CA SA

Mugabe compared to Adolf Hitler

Article in the Business Day today starts "The South African Communist Party (SACP) has backed the Congress of South African Trade Unions' (Cosatu's) stand against Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's human rights violations. "It would be wrong for the South African government to act like a trade union, but it is equally wrong to expect Cosatu to act like government," SACP secretary-general Blade Nzimande said. The SACP's stance may widen the gap between the African National Congress (ANC) and its tripartite alliance partners, the SACP and Cosatu, on how to deal with Zimbabwe. It signals an attempt by the alliance partners to assert each group's right to comment on and approach sensitive issues according to the directive of their constituencies, instead of towing the line of the ruling party. Zimbabwe last month deported 13 unionists aligned to Cosatu who were on a fact-finding mission after a call for help by their counterparts and civil society structures in that country. This prompted the union to launch a blistering attack on Mugabe, comparing his tactics to those of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in wartime Germany.

Germany regrets Namibia 'genocide'

Interested to read today about the German Ambassador to Nambia making a statement of regret concerning the killing of between 35,000 and 105,000 Namibians in the early 1900s when they rebelled against German rule in 1904, see BBC. The obvious link was to the new and brutal book by Andre Brink on the subject, still chewing over that one...or perhaps just simply disturbed by its violent content as I noted early in my blog. Anyway, I wonder what will happen next now as a compensation claim is on the cards...

Herero to file atrocity claims against Germany

It was reported today in the Mail and Guardian (South Africa) that the Namibian Herero are to file atrocity claims against Germany. A four-billion dollar claim against Germany and two firms for alleged atrocities committed against Namibia's Herero people in colonial times may go to court within two months, The Namibian daily reported on Wednesday. The German government, Deutsche Bank and shipping company Woermann Line (now known as SAFmarine), stand accused of forming a brutal alliance "to commit atrocities and exterminate more than 65,000 Hereros between 1904 and 1907". The full article reads:

Herero to file atrocity claims against Germany

Mail and Guardian Online / SAPA , 22 January 2003 14:23

A four-billion dollar claim against Germany and two firms for alleged atrocities committed against Namibia's Herero people in colonial times may go to court within two months, The Namibian daily reported on Wednesday.

The German government, Deutsche Bank and shipping company Woermann Line (now known as SAFmarine), stand accused of forming a "brutal alliance" to commit atrocities and exterminate more than 65 000 Hereros between 1904 and 1907.

Germany colonised Namibia in 1884 and prime grazing land was given to whites, leading to bloody wars with local tribes. In 1904, German General Lothar von Trotha issued an extermination order, stating that "every Herero, whether found armed or unarmed, with or without cattle, will be shot."

The Herero People's Reparation Corporation is now charging in court that two German companies helped the Berlin government to relentlessly pursue the enslavement and genocidal destruction of Hereros.

Herero Paramount Chief Kuaima Riruako told The Namibian that the corporation was still awaiting the final dates for the court case. But he added that the two cases could be heard in the United States, where the Herero People's Reparation Corporation is registered, in March or April.

The two cases -- the first against the government and the second against the two companies -- are worth two billion dollars each. The papers before the court stated: "The defendants and imperial Germany formed a German commercial enterprise which cold-bloodedly employed explicitly sanctioned extermination, the destruction of tribal culture and social organisation, concentration camps, forced labour, medical experimentation and the exploitation of women and children in order to advance their common financial interests."

The claims were originally also made against a third German manufacturing company, Terex Corporation, but were withdrawn after Terex claimed it was under different management at the time of the alleged atrocities.

The Herero is a collective term for a group of tribes -– the Himba, Herero, Tijimba and Mbanderu -- and there are more than a 100 000 Herero people living in Namibia, southern Angola and Botswana.

Sapa-AFP