Assessing how an alternative waste management system may facilitate subaltern and environmental justice: a thematic analysis of a zero waste pilot case study in South Africa
Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Abstract
Waste is socio-political – a symbol of our economic and consumerist society. Since the Industrial Revolution, our manufacturing processes and materialist lifestyles produced more hazardous and nondegradable externalities than we were prepared to deal with. With environmental and consumer pressure building, we are at a crossroads between continuing with business-as-usual and justly transitioning over to a systemically different, zero waste society where the focus on waste management shifts to waste prevention so that, like Karl Marx, it challenges and eventually changes production processes, ownership, consumption, and ultimately, our connection with the natural environment and each other. South Africa’s waste landscape is characterised by two things: its reliance on landfills and the thousands of informal waste pickers reclaiming the value of discarded goods. So, what could a zero waste system that is just toward the environment and the subaltern look like in South Africa? In exploring this question, I considered the work of waste pickers, as well as the case of an urban composting initiative for an inner-city market supporting the zero waste philosophy. Synthesising these, I imagine a gradual, deep bottom-up transformation in attitude, behaviour and eventually infrastructure with regard to our relationship with the environment, ownership and use, as well as the revaluation of the material and therefore waste ‘management’. The role and insights of waste pickers and local, informal economies will be crucial and influential. Though South African waste pickers do not yet participate in the organic waste stream on a noticeable scale, the prioritisation of composting by the Warwick Zero Waste project and the National Waste Management Strategy sees the recovery and local, low-tech, low-cost composting of organic waste as a vital starting point in establishing a more regenerative food and waste system that will build solid
Description
A research report submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Development Studies by a combination of coursework and research to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, . Johannesburg, 2024
Keywords
UCTD, limate change, Consumption, Landfill, Organic waste, Polycrisis, Recycling, Waste management, Zero waste
Citation
Van Biljon (née Swart), Johanna Yvonne (Jani). (2024). Assessing how an alternative waste management system may facilitate subaltern and environmental justice: a thematic analysis of a zero waste pilot case study in South Africa [Masters dissertation, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg]. WIReDSpace.