South Africa and their confused energy leaders
August 14th, 2008The world has of late been making a concerted effort to be more friendly to the delicate ecosystem we inhabit and this message has spread into South Africa and retailers are quickly taking advantage of consumers newfound knowledge and consciousness of the planet.
In South Africa, Woolworths is dominating the front end of this new war on chemicals and waste. They now offer the most extensive range of organic products in South Africa, their trucks run on diesel that includes a 5% mix of used cooking oil, their plastic bags are made of 45% recycled materials, they promote the use of re-usable bags, their baskets and trolleys are made of recycled plastic and they are constantly working on new energy efficient ideas.
They also now offer bins at their shops where you can leave your long life light bulbs for recycling, as disposing of them in normal household waste leaches mercury into the environment, something that is highly poisonous to the planet and to humans health.
South Africa have recently said that they will start to move away from dirty coal, which is their main source of electricity and move onto renewable sources such as solar and also make more use of nuclear power. Again, some will say that nuclear power is a safe and effective source of energy. However, I think we can all agree that it is not. If it were safe to sprinkle a little nuclear waste on our morning cereal, then we might agree that it is safe.
But when you need to store nuclear waste underground and fiercely protect it from any attack, it can be agreed that it is not safe at all. And once again, nuclear power needs to use uranium, and again, uranium won’t last forever. Compounding this is the fact that we need to mine uranium and if the world runs out of oil, we won’t be able to operate the machinery to mine uranium.
South Africa has vast amounts of sunlight and this needs to be taken advantage of in the fight for clean power.
We will R30 billion rand on an arms package http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/Article.aspx?id=814268,
but then not lead the race in clean power. We don’t need more arms and submarines. The earth does not need submarines. What it needs is a supply of energy that will never run out and that is clean.
What South Africa also needs is a recycling program that is initiated countrywide and supported and funded by the government. Our government is notoriously unhelpful when it comes to the real problems that we as a country and a planet face. Our current recycling efforts are maintained by small groups of dedicated teams who care about this country. Some households recycle their waste, but it is not a focus of our governments energy. If I separate my household waste into plastic, glass, paper and tin and leave it outside my house, all of that waste goes to landfill. Which is to say our government does not have a in house program to recycle waste. We as individuals need to take our recycling to the depots by ourselves.
This is not a problem, but as humans in the modern day, we want everything to be easy and government needs to take advantage of this. They need to offer the services of a proper recycling truck that picks up waste at our homes. When we start hearing news that Cape Town is running out of landfill space I think it’s time to maybe put a recycling program in place. But as our government is basically clueless in this regard, we continue to not worry about it and we leave it up to shops such as Woolworths to educate us.
It is scary to say this, but from my point of view, most of the South African publics awareness of the planet probably comes not from their OWN government, but rather from Sky News, Al Gore and Woolworths. It’s unbelievable!
According to this article
http://www.greenclippings.co.za/gc_main/article.php?story=20050916105329888
which was written in 2005, Cape Town’s major landfill sites would reach capacity in 5 years. That means 2010, nicely coinciding with an influx of visitors for the 2010 Soccer World Cup!
Does our government not see itself designing, engineering and producing what could be the perfect storm? I guess not as they plod along, buying submarines and telling us that garlic and sweet potatoes will cure AIDS. Obviously, they don’t really believe that HIV causes AIDS in the first place http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/720995.stm
As with the electricity crisis, South Africa waits for a minor detail to become a crisis before they address it. Firstly it was Eskom and their electricity crisis, but now that seems to have been swept under the carpet and the public is calm again. So now we have electricity and it all seems good.
But what we have next on our hands is scary. When Cape Town runs out of landfill space, where are we going to put all our household waste? What is going to happen to Cape Town’s thriving tourist industry? Are foreigners really going to be interested in visiting what would essentially be a rubbish dump? This might be blowing the situation out of proportion, but it’s what we need to push government into taking action.
Our government does not listen to our voices, they don’t listen to us if we march to their gates and propose ideas to them, they don’t listen if we shout at them and they don’t listen if the world shouts at them. What we need to do is basically give them a solid kick in the head to wake them up. Even then, they usually just fall asleep again.
What I foresee for the future of energy and recycling in South Africa is that retailers such as Woolworths and private enterprises will be the driving force behind these eco-conscious initiatives. They will be the ones pushing the public to take action, and the ones driving the force of “green” in South Africa. We already see it now on a day to day basis, as magazines and retailers educate us.
So while we go about buying organic produce and recycling our household waste, the government and all their merry men sit under the water in submarines, burning thousands of litres of diesel. Under the ocean, you don’t feel the swells, you don’t see the storms and you definitely don’t see the landfill sites overflowing.
Our government find themselves in a submarine right now, but I think as soon as they surface and open that hatch, they will look to the skies, they will scan their eyes across the land and realise that they have in fact created the perfect storm.