City Improvement Districts (CIDs), schools and perhaps even the City of Cape Town, would do well to take a leaf out of the Little Mowbray Rosebank Improvement District’s (LMRID) book when it comes to negating unnecessary landfill.
Thanks to a unique partnership between LMRID and Rhodes High School in Mowbray, leaves cleared from streets are being turned into compost.
According to Patsy Taylor, who handles LMRID’s social and cleansing portfolio, about 9 800 orange plastic bags, filled with mostly foliage, were being collected by their appointed cleansing contractor, Straatwerk, per year.
“And that was all just being picked up by the City and taken to a landfill. As is still the case with the City’s blue bags. So we just had to do something, it made sense.”
About a year ago, Taylor met with Straatwerk to discuss the way forward.
“I said we need to do this smarter and from then on we started separating recycling which goes out with my recycling every second Wednesday and then it became an issue of the leaves. We decided composting is the way to go.”
Dave Sivertsen, responsible for LMRID’s safety and security portfolio, says with them in need of a space to set up composting troughs, the City was their first port of call. But, despite arranging meetings with all of the City stakeholders – including recycling, parks and forest, and sports and recreation – nothing came of it.
Sivertsen says it was explained to them that there would be too much bureaucracy and red tape involved.
But a meet-and-greet meeting with Rhodes High School principal Bilqees Moosa in November last year proved fortuitous.
“LMRID had arranged a meeting with Yusuf Mohamed (councillor for Ward 57) and Alex Lansdowne (PR councillor) so that the councillor could meet the principal and at that meeting I had the chance to say to Mrs Moosa, what about this site in the back?”
Moosa, who took over the role of the principal in 2021, says with the school having been in Mowbray for the past 50 years, the project is an opportunity for the school to give back.
Rhodes High is a commuter school with most of its learners travelling from Khayelitsha, Nyanga, Gugulethu, and Mitchell’s Plain.
Moosa says, with sustainability being one of the school’s values, they put the idea to the school’s Student Representative Council (SRC).
“We got the SRC’s permission and we all agreed that this was something important for both the community and us. Since we will work together as a team to make this a better place for our learners and community as well.”
Taylor says before the school’s involvement, everything just went into orange bags. The next step was getting Straatwerk to separate the recyclables into clear plastic bags, with the orange bags reserved for foliage only. As of mid-January, the orange bags were replaced with reusable ones made of hessian.
“Because the school has given us the use of this piece of land, LMRID purchased trolleys. So when they go out and do their street sweeping, they load everything into the trolleys, and now, because we have a place to unload the bags, we are using reusable bags,” says Taylor.
With the money saved from no longer having the purchase plastic bags (a whopping R22 000), LMRID extended Straatwerk’s contract. In addition to the existing four shifts a week, the cleaning team now also works an extra shift on Saturdays, attending to the Rhodes High property.
Chris Steenkamp, Rhodes High’s estate manager, says the field (located on the right-hand corner of the property behind the school building) was pretty-much wasted land.
“We used it as a rubbish dump and there was also a small vegetable garden there. Then LMRID got on board. They hired a contractor to clear that piece of land for us. That was towards the end of last year.”
With the eight compost troughs installed in February, Steenkamp says the school’s and LMRID’s ultimate goal is to develop the piece of land into a little park.
“There will be recycling there, of course, with composting down the one side. There are trees already in place. And when the lawn is nicely established, we will put picnic benches and umbrellas there for the teaching staff during the week. And if neighbours want to come in and sit under the trees over the weekend, why not?”
Taylor says the first batch of compost should be ready by July. She says when they get to that stage, the decision of what to do with the compost will be left to the school.
“The goal is not to make any profit from this project. It is just to build relationships and get rid of the leaves and not use plastic bags. Our long-term vision is to get a woodchipper and then we can start saying to residents, right, you are chopping down a tree, come bring it to us, and slowly get the residents involved.”
