3 minute read
WASTE
Rethinking hazardous waste management The 11-million elephants in the room
Research shows that 92.7% of hazardous waste is landfilled in South Africa. That is a staggering 48-million tons of hazardous waste or the equivalent of 11-million elephants. Eleven-million elephants stacked on top of each other would create a tower that is 36 410km high – almost long enough to reach around the entire earth.
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According to the South Africa State of Waste Report 2018, South Africa generates more than 107.7-million tons of waste annually. Of this, 48% or 52-million tons, is classified as hazardous waste that may have a detrimental impact on health and the environment. A total of 92.7% of this is landfilled every year.
To compound matters, South Africa’s dumping grounds are filling up at an alarming rate with some large sites having less than three years of airspace available, says Leon Grobbelaar, the president of the Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa. Engineering News has recently reported that Johannesburg, Tshwane and Cape Town each have less than 10 years of landfill life left.
Legislators have identified this as a fundamental issue that needs to be resolved, and as such the South Africa Waste Management Strategy 2020 states: “Prevent waste, and where waste cannot be prevented, ensure 40% of waste is diverted from landfill within five years; 55% within 10 years; and at least 70% within 15 years leading to zero waste going to landfill”. A tall order, but a crucial one for our country and environment.
Waste that is not taken to landfill poses possible environmental and human health risks and disasters – the tragic tailings dam failure in Jagersfontein (2022) is an example. In a recent Reuters report, it is noted that South Africa has the highest number of high-risk tailings dams (79) in the 10 countries that were profiled. Quartz Africa asserts that “there are growing calls for the cleaning up of high-risk tailings dams so that the waste can be re-processed and used to fill up mined out operations, thereby reducing environmental hazards.” Mariette Liefferink from Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE) warns that in terms of ecological risk, the issue of mining waste is widely recognised as second only to global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion.
A high degree of effort is required to mitigate environmental risks posed by hazardous waste, no matter where that waste currently exists. For this to be achieved requires industry to pursue zero
waste aggressively with landfill technologies from both sides of the buyer-supplier relationship.
TREATMENT OF HAZARDOUS WASTE
There are various ways of treating different types of hazardous waste including but not limited to biological, physical/chemical, thermal or disposal. The type of treatment depends highly on the contaminant and the desired result, as not all waste streams are susceptible to all treatment methods. Other factors that influence the choice of treatment method include the conditions of contamination and surroundings, type of remediation required (destruction, separation or containment), operational intensity, capital requirements, relative costs, reliability of outcome and the time window.
Treating hazardous waste is by no means an easy feat, and much more work is needed to develop solutions for waste streams that currently have no treatment options. Combining +50-year-old principles with innovative product technology, Bemical delivers solutions to hazardous waste streams that are based on the most efficient methods in biological and physical/chemical treatment. Waste stream examples that have been managed via these treatment methods include hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), heavy metals such as lead, arsenic and chromium, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), manufactured gas plant waste (including cyanide, naphthalene, total petroleum hydrocarbons, arsenic), chromium ore process residual, asbestos as well as platinum group metal tailings and sewage.
Bemical’s leadership team includes a head of technical and project operations, an expert with over 20 years of global remediation experience, as well as a chief science officer serving as an associate professor with a distinguished academic track record in chemical and environmental engineering. Bemical has partnered with the Department of Engineering at the University of Pretoria to conduct further research into industry-leading remediation products to better serve the variety of waste streams available.
Contact Jaco Nel at admin@bemical.com or +27 83 363 0315.
www.bemical.com
