South Africa’s landfills are fast running out of space and an innovative approach to drastically reduce waste is the only solution.
“We have to come up with strategies to minimize waste, so that we can have a clean and healthy environment,” says Bulelwa April, an MEng Civil Engineering student, who is exploring how to turn garbage into a useful commodity.
Based on the Bellville Campus, Bulelwa’s interest in South Africa’s landfills was sparked during her undergraduate studies, when she focused on urban engineering.
With a lack of landfills in South Africa, Bulelwa grabbed the opportunity to participate in a research project that she hopes will shed some light on alternate solutions to South Africa’s waste disposal woes.
As part of her research, Bulelwa has focused her attention on the edible oil industry and the solid waste that is generated from the production of oils, which is extracted from different types of seeds and fruits such as canola, sunflower, soybean, avocado and olive.
Instead of disposing the solid waste to landfills, she suggests industry turns the waste into biofuels such as biodiesel and bioethanol, a renewable energy source.
“Due to urbanisation in South Africa, there is a lack of solid waste landfill sites, and disposal of solid waste generated from the edible oil industry incurs cost and creates an environmental burden.”
Over the past few months Bulelwa has taken samples of the waste and mixed it with various other components in order to produce bioethanol.
“My research shows that you can create a by-product from waste,” she says.
“This will help eliminate the problem caused by waste water sludge in sewer systems and assist in minimizing the disposal of solid waste to landfills.”
Bulelwa, whose project is funded by the Water Research Commission, and a student bursary provided by Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology, says this is just one of the possible solutions to dealing with waste and South Africa’s landfill problems.
