Anon

This is the biggest problem facing this country – crime by big businesses and syndicates. The guys responsible need to be nailed for this !!!!

Peter Davies

This is incredible! In my opinion, the management of Wasteman must have known about this. Responsible waste management has been tarnished by this company’s alleged actions, and I hope that those responsible will face the full weight of the law. This includes the many hospitals and medical practises that contributed to this waste stream. We have laws that enforce ‘Duty of Care’ on producers of waste. These require that waste producers ensure that their waste is disposed of according to the law – precisely to prevent the sort of dishonest, irresponsible practises we now see at Welkom.

Peter Davies SFIWM
Past Preseident: Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa

Mike Robins

This is an abomination which can be blamed on far more than those immeadiately concerned. With our countries new anti polution stance and hence stringent emissions standards, the only real effective way of dealing with this waste is by incineration has now all but been outlawed. This is now the result of these actions and is not the first time and certainly won’t be the last. In the forseeable future the headlines will no boubt re tell the same story in a different place by some one else. The problem is not going to go away. Authentic Land Fill areas are becomming scarce and besides that, produce the most dangerous Green House Gas in the form of methane which has to be burned off anyway.

Incineration proccesses have moved ahead leaps and bounds in the past ten years and dirty great big smoking incinerators are the thing of the past. If there are such incinerators opperating by all means shut them down until they comply, but you cannot outlaw incineration which effectively reduce waste by as much as 90% in volume, which are now capable of eliminating the so called dreaded Dioxine and Furan problem. We have a much greater problem in smoke produced by informal settlements, sugar cane burning and fuel fired vehicles than some strategically placed incinerators destroying what we are trying to sweep under the proverbial carpet.

While we watch our technologically advanced TV sets and witness the contaminated dust being spread by the back actor in the background while the Green Scorpions report on what has been buried, technology has also crept into the incineration process and the volume of that dust in the background would possible only have been produced by a good incinerator over a period of a year or more.
That is a needle in a haystack !

Mike Robins
Pro Incineration

Annette Naude

What a sad day that the Institute of Waste Management’s credibility is at stake through the operations of cowboys. Incineration is but one of many successfull technologies for Health care risk waste (HCRW) treatment in SA. Wasteman operated a brilliant system in KZN: the Logmed unit. What went wrong? Greed?
I used to do compliance audits on two HCRW plants, both non-incineration units. Does the external auditor not compare input, throughput and final output for disposal with the actual tonnages received?
I hope the scorpions sting not only the abhorrant operation but also all the management and external auditors that were aware of the criminal procedures.