Program Director:
MEC for Agriculture and Environmental Affairs, Dr Meshack Radebe;
Your Worship the Mayor of Newcastle Local Municipality, Cllr Afzul Rehman;
Councillors;
Traditional leaders;
Members of the community;
Members of the media;
Ladies and gentlemen
Introduction
Before I begin with my speech, I wish to request the leadership of Newcastle Local Municipality who are sharing the podium with me and their officials sitting amongst the audience to rise for a round of applause. The applaud is in recognition of the sterling job done by your municipality to win the tough Greenest Municipality Competition prize awards for three years in succession. The leadership and staff have all worked very hard for putting Newcastle on the national map.
Winning any competition for three years in a row is no mean feat and is usually achieved by a dedicated team which works with nerves of steel, who are better organized with efficient planning and execution skills. In sporting codes, such performance is graced with congratulatory words like “hat trick” champions and in most cases; the winning team is given a trophy to keep for good. It was befitting when MEC called for a special celebration of Newcastle efforts at the GMC Prize Awards Ceremony held in Durban in June.
In the light of this, we can safely say today marks a special day and history in the calendar of Newcastle and its residents. When the date for the celebration was set, I immediately cleared my diary so I can be part of history-making day.
The Greenest Municipality Competition (GMC)
We started this competition as the Cleanest Town Competition and focused on the mandate of implementing waste management along the principle of the Triple Rs which stood for Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
Following extensive engagement, we reviewed this competition and changed the name to the Greenest Municipality Competition.
In line with our mandate, the GMC prizes are tied to the implementation of green economy projects such as renewable energy and protective and sustainable use of environmental resources with Extended Public Works Programme modelled job creation. Since GMC is municipalities driven, it offers the municipalities life-long opportunities and incentives to go green in all their operations whilst at the same time developing the local economy and creating sustainable jobs.
Engagement with municipalities: 2009 Local Government Indaba
As the Department of Environmental Affairs, we believe that municipalities play significant roles in environmental conservation because of the substantial size of land they manage. The land under municipal jurisdiction includes game parks, open spaces, rivers, industrial areas and cultural heritage sites amongst others. All these natural landscapes give municipalities’ strategic advantage to play meaningful roles in protecting the environment & utilising resources at their disposal to engender economic growth.
Having noted this important role, we convened the Local Government Indaba on Environment at Indaba Hotel & Conference Centre in Gauteng in July 2009. The conference has amongst others, deliberated and resolved on the following:
To transfer the air quality licensing function to metros and district municipalities in terms of NEM: Air Quality to be implemented from September of that year: 2009. Since municipalities have industrial activity within their boundaries, the purpose of transferring licensing function is for municipalities to strive to build the necessary air quality management capacity aligned to air quality problems in their areas.
On Climate Change, local government must through working with SALGA, develop the local government components of the National Climate Change Response Policy
On Waste Services & Management, municipalities are expected to develop Integrated Waste Management Plans (IWMP) and raise the profile of waste management and bring it to same level of importance as water & electricity provision.
Coastal located municipalities have an added responsibilities to ensure conservation of coastal environment, maintain natural attributes of coastal landscapes and seascapes and ensure harvesting of natural resources are done in a way which ensures social, economic and ecological sustainability and justification for development.
Local government also has key role to play in managing biodiversity and other natural resources, especially in decision-making for spatial planning, land-use and infrastructure development. This includes the responsibility to reverse biodiversity loss, proper open space management, use of natural and cultural resources to enhance local economy and role to mitigate threats to biodiversity by creating buffers to effects of climate change.
Needless to say, the resolutions of the conference outline the areas of assessment for GMC participants which in summary assesses municipalities’ competency in waste management and minimisation, air quality management, green economy programmes to mitigate or combat effects of climate change and management of biodiversity.
Newcastle Local Municipality road to winning
Judging by their back to back winning of GMC Prize Awards from 2011 to 2013, there is no shred of doubt that Newcastle Local Municipality has made it their business to understand the GMC rules and implemented suitable projects.
It is pleasing to note that:
The municipality has responded positively to the concerns of litter flowing from the bus and taxi rank into the Ncandu River by adopting the river. We were very excited to be part of the project launch on the 14th of this month. The project has created an opportunity for 49 individuals who will be trained to cleaning the river by removing all the waste that converges on the river bank and into the river.
All recyclable waste will be diverted from the waste stream and the other will be landfilled
Another interesting project is the Landfill Site which is a GMB+ site/Class 2 Landfill situated off the N11 on the Madadeni Road. Its operation is unique in South Africa and compare with the best in the world. It is fully fenced, has a fully operational weighbridge and produces data for South African Waste Information System, the site has boreholes which are monitored and results are measured against South African National Standards.
The Site also deals with a large percentage of its biogenic waste through a waste diversion strategy. Most of the dry waste is also being diverted from site through an informal picking process. The site offers a methodology of sites similar in size to maximise out of the available airspace.
Whilst on the subject of waste management, it is pleasing to note that Newcastle has an effective recycling of soft drinks bottles into woven fibre. This is a cooperative which provides an alternative process to diverting waste away from landfill site. This is good news because the PET factory in Madadeni is ensuring zero PET into landfill site & helping to create opportunities for locals to make a sustainable living out of picking these PET out of waste stream and into the PET factory.
This initiative directly responds to our call to have as few landfill sites as possible and only to resort to dumping waste into landfill sites when it is absolutely necessary. It is advisable that municipalities should learn best practices from one another for the sake of conserving the environment. There should be no harm in other municipalities sending their waste management officials to Newcastle to come to learn and take the good lesson back home for implementation.
Conclusion
As we celebrate the big achievement, you should always remember that you have set the bar very high and that will make other competing municipalities envious. However, the standard you have set can also inspire others to work even harder to meet and exceed your performance.
In other words, positive results put you on the spotlight which others would like to occupy. To stay there and ward off competition would require Newcastle Local Municipality not only to be consistent but also to double the efforts. My advice to you is that, like wealthy business people, you should always challenge yourself on gained achievements and push your horizons even further in pursuit of new goals. This way, no one will catch up with you.
I thank you!
