Hout Bay recycling cooperative to close

KAREN WATKINS

A Hout Bay recycling cooperative is to close its doors after missing the latest tender process.

The recycling project began in 2007 at Kronendal Primary School. Six women went door-to-door collecting recyclables. They soon outgrew the space with 75 tons of waste being saved from going to landfill each month.

Noticing that recycling at the local drop-off behind the police station was virtually non-existent, they held several meetings with the City’s solid waste department to use the land for this purpose. An agreement was reached to allow 10 Imizamo Yethu residents to sort and sell waste from the depot.

“It was a bare area with no fencing, muddy in winter and scorching in summer,” said Nokwanda Sotyantya, who has worked there since the beginning.

Eight recyclers then formed a cooperative in 2008. Most of them are the only bread-winners in families of up to seven adults and children. Sharing the income, they take home R2000 to R2500 to put bread on the table and pay school costs. And daily they each take home up to R200 from the sale of good used articles.

“The benefit is not only to our families but also the planet as we retrieve, sort and sell over 30 tons of our waste a month,” said Ms Sotyantya.

Over time, an office was donated to them by resident Shaun Rudsman, said Ms Sotyantya, and the City built a roof over the sorting area.

And later, under the management of Antoney Roberts, the drop-off was paved and upgraded using mostly dropped off waste. Ms Sotyantya said the Hout Bay depot had subsequently won many awards (“Recycling hope for a better life”, Sentinel July 31, 2020).

Ms Sotyantya said the recycling facility was working so well that the City used it as a model for 11 other drop-offs around Cape Town.

Jemimah Birch, a teacher at Kronendal Primary, said other services at the depot - including the hauling of garage, garden and building waste - went out to tender and so the City decided that the waste sorters should also have to tender to be there.

Ms Rudsman said that because the sorters had not been familiar with the tendering process, the City had given them guidance on how to go about it.

“The cooperative were awarded their first tender in November 2008. Subsequent to this, the cooperative needed to submit a tender application every two to three years,” said Ms Rudsman.

However, after they missed the process last year, the City asked them to vacate the property at the end of June.

Mayoral committee member for urban waste management Grant Twigg said they could not give contractors reminders to tender as it was seen as unfairly favouring one applicant over others. He said that because companies stood to financially benefit from processing recycling at the facility, a competitive public open tender process had be followed in accordance with the Municipal Financial Management Act.

Meanwhile the sorters fear for their futures.

Ten years ago, Bolekwa Sipoko left her job cleaning Imizamo Yethu roads to join the recycling cooperative. She has put her daughter through school and now does not know how she will manage to pay the fees for her to study human resources at Johannesburg University while supporting her sick brother and other family members.

Xolani Toto fears that he won’t be able to pay for his son to matriculate in the Eastern Cape.

Siyabonga Mzantsi has a one-year-old child and is the only person in the household who is working.

Vathiswa Ngalwa has been using her money to build a house, which is currently at eye level. And Nosakhe Dyani is also building a house, in the Eastern Cape.

Ms Sotyantya said she hoped the new company, WasteWant, would employ some of them.

“The cooperative knew nothing about working for themselves when they started. Now they are fit and well trained,” she said.

Ms Sotyantya’s previous business, with her late husband of 20 years, was making food and selling it from a small caravan in Imizamo Yethu. “It was the first of its kind in the area and very active. I was up at 3am preparing vetkoek, fried chips, fish and meat. We bought a second-hand car and a bigger caravan,” she said.

She would now like to make clothes and teach others, but she needs a big enough space, machines and fabric.

Lydia Anderson, WasteWant’s waste management project manager, said they planned to employ people from the area.

She said WasteWant had 13 years of experience working with the City and it had applied when the tender for managing its drop sites had been advertised last year.