Mountains of uncollected rubbish are becoming a daily reality in informal settlements across Cape Town, with residents in areas such as Dunoon, Philippi and Nkanini reporting weeks without refuse collection. This is fuelling illegal dumping and exposing the human face of a deepening waste crisis.
The situation on the ground reflects a far bigger problem: South Africa is rapidly running out of landfill space. Major metros, including Cape Town and Johannesburg, have less than five years of capacity left, while the country continues to rely on an increasingly unsustainable “collect and dump” model.
Organic waste alone is estimated to cost the economy R8.7bn annually when sent to landfills, while also contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. The waste sector accounts for more than 30% of the country’s total methane output.
According to CapeNature’s State of Environment Outlook Report (2024), the closure of landfill sites due to capacity limits, outdated infrastructure, and new environmental policies has reduced overall capacity to three regional-scale sites: Vissershok (City of Cape Town), Mossel Bay and Gansbaai. Others, like the Coastal Park facility in Muizenberg, are projected to reach full capacity within the next three years.
This has placed immense strain on municipal services, contributed to increased costs for private sector waste generators (primarily retail, construction and hospitality), and elevated regulatory scrutiny for all parties in the region.
Against this backdrop, industry players are racing to find alternatives. A partnership between Oricol Environmental Services and Cape Town Biogas aims to shift the province towards a zero-waste-to-landfill model by diverting organic waste into a bio-digestion facility in Athlone.
We are treating waste as a resource rather than something to bury.
— Oricol COO Dirk de Wet
The plant, the only one of its kind in Africa, converts organic waste into biomethane for energy, beverage-grade CO₂ and nutrient-rich material for agriculture, taking what was once discarded and turning it into valuable commodities.
“The waste sector contributes 30.2% of South Africa’s methane emissions, largely from organic waste decomposing in landfills,” said Oricol COO Dirk de Wet.
“We are treating waste as a resource rather than something to bury.”
The process begins at Oricol’s Cape Town facility, where expired or off-spec products are securely depackaged to prevent them from re-entering the market. While packaging materials are recycled, the organic content is channeled into bio-digestion. The partnership has already processed about 8,000 tonnes of organic waste this year, with plans to scale further.
Pressure is mounting. The draft National Waste Management Strategy 2026 has, for the first time, classified organic waste as a priority stream requiring urgent intervention, warning that national waste diversion rates currently at about 10% are unsustainable. In the Western Cape, a full ban on organic waste to landfill is set to take effect in 2027, placing businesses under growing compliance pressure.
At a municipal level, efforts are also under way to divert recyclable waste. A new facility at Coastal Park Landfill Site is processing recyclables collected through Cape Town’s door-to-door programme, sorting materials such as plastics, glass and paper for reuse in manufacturing. The plant currently handles about 25 tonnes a day and is expected to scale up to 65 tonnes, while creating as many as 160 jobs.
City officials say such initiatives are critical to extending the lifespan of landfill sites and building a recycling economy. However, with rubbish piling up in vulnerable communities and landfill space dwindling rapidly, the question remains whether these interventions can move quickly enough, and at sufficient scale, to avert a full-blown waste management crisis.
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