The orange recycling bags programme that was meant to encourage eThekwini residents to recycle their refuse has reportedly collapsed. Picture: File
Durban — The orange bag recycling tender that cost the municipality R60 million in 2016 has collapsed.
The recycling programme was meant to encourage eThekwini residents to recycle their refuse, and the blame is apportioned to the fraudulent manner the tender was awarded.
The municipality had planned that the residents would be supplied with the orange bags by a contractor, into which they would put recyclable waste, while the rest of the garbage was put in black bags. The orange bags would then collected by the contractor for recycling.
Since 2015, the programme has encountered issues such as the non-delivery and non-collection of orange bags, inconsistencies in the procurement process, and the nomination of companies to supply orange bags that lacked the necessary expertise and technical understanding.
DA caucus leader councillor Mzamo Billy said the investigation had found that the company that won the tender to produce millions of bags for the municipality was incapable of doing so, had underquoted and regularly missed its deadlines.
Billy said that the contract was awarded fraudulently around 2016-17, and it floundered a while later.
He said that a number of collection companies have ceased operations because they have not been paid by the municipality.
“Another company was awarded the tender in 2018, but that too was challenged because of irregularities.
“Recently we have been getting a lot of complaints from eThekwini residents, who say that they have not been receiving the orange bags, and their recyclables have not been collected for a very long time.”
Billy said that those who collect the orange bags have also complained that they have not been able to do their collection work because they have not been paid by the council. He said that the municipality is reportedly in the process of revising the programme.
The failure of the recycling programme has negatively affected the city’s waste management and recycling efforts as a whole, he said.
“The condition of our landfill site is another imminent catastrophe, and the promotion of recycling ensures that not all waste ends up in the landfill, but is recycled.”
A source who spoke to the Daily News on condition of anonymity for fear of being victimised said: “The municipality had a meeting with some collectors in an attempt to understand and address the problem of non-collection and non-receipt of orange bags.”
The source said that due to lower volumes of recyclables being collected in some areas, contractors have stopped collecting and are complaining about it not making business sense.
Also, the source said, in other areas a lot of mixed, contaminated recyclables were collected, which adds to disposal costs for the collector as they had to pay at the landfill for disposing of non-recyclable waste.
eThekwini Municipality head of communications Lindiwe Khuzwayo said, “We acknowledge that there are some challenges with this programme. Therefore, the cleansing and solid waste unit has drafted a report to the committee to advise the council of the current challenges that the programme faces, and request its permission to reconfigure the current programme to address the identified challenges”.
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