Track: Sustainability and Green Systems

Abstract

The knowledge of the composition of a city’s municipal solid waste and embedded resources is one of the pre-requisite for effective planning and implementation of sustainable strategies. A quantification exercise conducted towards estimating the composition and energy potential of the City of Johannesburg waste streams has been presented in this study. The waste quantification was conducted at Robinson deep landfill site and captured summer waste profile. The study showed that between 1.1 to 2.3 TWh/year can be generated from household collected refuse, also known as round collected refuse, depending on the degree of recycling implemented while waste from restaurants and eateries known as dailies can theoretically generate between 0.023 to 0.081 TWh/year of energy. The result also highlights the quantity of paper, plastic among other recyclables that can be diverted into other processes as secondary raw material. The energy potential of the non-recyclable energy potent materials was also presented.