Construction waste makes up a much larger proportion of landfill than household rubbish.
The [UK] government, it seems, has woken up to the construction waste problem. Last April, the Environment Agency mandated site waste management plans for construction projects in England worth more than £300,000, in which, from the pre-construction stage onwards, firms must declare waste materials and how they will be disposed of. The agency says this will cut 100m tonnes of waste annually.
Most recycling in South Africa only happens when there is a financial incentive - whether it's people living on the streets picking through household refuse bins for material to sell to recycling depots, or Ross Demolition salvaging doors and windows to sell to home renovators, or Cape Brick manufacturing bricks from crushed building rubble. It's time to up the ante and increase the cost of dumping to landfill sites. But the Brighton & Hove Wood Recycling Project in Britain illustrates that there's a lot of education needed to turn things around in the construction industry.
Rory, thanks for the post.
I fully agree. Solid waste per capita in Cape Town for example has risen rapidly in the last few years. Landfills cannot cope and new large ones need to be developed which will place upward pressure on the costs of waste disposal. Time to use economic instruments to start addressing the problem - the real costs of waste need to be signalled to the waste generators themselves. However, policy design need to be comprehensive - there may be some unintended consequences such as illegal dumping for example. Or distributional impacts.
Posted by: africaeconomist | 15 September 2008 at 09:03 PM