Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2006. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Municipal waste presents problems of pollution, health hazards and resource conservation. Household waste forms part of municipal solid waste that is a challenge to control due to its heterogeneity and diversity. The ever-filling landfills for the disposal of solid waste due to rapid population increase and urbanization call for urgent waste management strategies to reduce, reuse and recycle solid waste. In this study householders' attitudes, participation in recycling and willingness to participate in household solid waste recycling are investigated to design and implement a household solid waste recycling programme in Stellenbosch. Questionnaire survey data about the awareness of, attitudes towards, and participation in household waste recycling were analyzed using descriptive statistical methods in the STATISTICA V6 program. Results were displayed in frequency tables, bar charts, maps and pie charts. The same statistical program was used to fmd the relationship between the householders' willingness to participate in the household solid waste recycling programme, namely the Blue Bag Household Waste Recovery Programme (BBHWRP), and their socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics. The respondents' willingness to sort household waste is compared to their willingness to participate in the BBHWRP in Stellenbosch. The willingness of householders in different residential areas is also compared. The relationships were analyzed by performing cross-tabulations and the chi-square test. The householder's attitudes towards household solid waste recycling were found to be positive, showing pro-recycling and pro-environmental behaviour among the respondents. Participation in recycling was found to be relatively moderate where separation of waste, self-delivery of recyclables to recycling buy-back centres and depots were commonly practised. Composting was least reported to be practised by householders in Stellenbosch. Respondents showed strong willingness to participate in the BBHWRP, however, most of the explanatory factors used, including place of residence, did not relate to respondents' willingness to participate in the BBHWRP. Despite this situation, smaller families and respondents' willingness to sort household waste at home by householders were found to relate directly to willingness to take part in the BBHWRP. There were, however, poor response rates in the study. Although reminders were used to improve response rates, only a 30 per cent response rate could be reached. It is recommended that a household solid waste sorting and recycling scheme in Stellenbosch should be considered in order to minimize and recycle household waste to extend the lifespan of the town's landfill site. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Munisipale afval skep probleme vir besoedeling, gesondheidsrisiko's en hulpbronbewaring. Huishoudelike afval vorm deel van die vaste afval wat moeilik is om te beheer weens die heterogeniteit en diversiteit daarvan. Die stortingsterreine vir vaste afval word al hoe voller weens die immer groeiende bevolking en weens verstedeliking, en dringende afvalbestuurstrategie om die soliede afval te verminder, weer te gebruik en te herwin, word benodig. In hierdie studie word gekyk na die houdings van die huisgesinne, hulle deelname aan herwinning en hulle gewilligheid om deel te neem aan vaste afvalherwinning sodat 'n huishoudelike vaste afvalherwinningsprogram ontwerp kan word en in Stellenbosch implementeer kan word. Vraelysopnamedata oor die bewustheid van, houdings teenoor en deelname aan huishoudelike afvalherwinning is ontleed met beskrywende statistiese metodes in die STATISTICA V6-program. Die resultate word vertoon in frekwensietabelle, balkdiagramme en sektordiagramme. Dieselfde statistiese program is gebruik om die verwantskap tussen die huisgesinne se gewilligheid om deel te neem aan die huishoudelike vaste afvalherwinningsprogram, naamlik die Blue Bag Household Waste Recovery Programme (BBHWRP), en hulle sosio-demografiese en sosio-ekonomiese kenmerke te vind. Die respondente se gewilligheid om huishoudelike afval te sorteer is vergelyk met gewilligheid om deel te neem aan die BBHWRP in Stellenbosch. Die gewilligheid van gesinne in verskillende woongebiede is ook vergelyk. Die verhoudings is ontleed aan die hand van kruistabulasies en met behulp van die chi-kwadraat toets. Daar is gevind dat die huisgesinne se houdings teenoor die herwinning van vaste huishoudelike afval positief is, wat 'n aanduiding gee dat die respondente pro-herwinning en pro-omgewing is. Daar is gevind dat die deelname aan herwinning relatief gemiddeld is waar sortering van afval en die selfaflewering van afval by herwinningsterugkoopsentra algemeen beoefen word. Baie min huisgesinne in Stellenbosch is betrokke by die maak van kompos. Respondente toon gewilligheid om deel te neem aan die BBHWRP, maar daar is gevind dat die verklarende faktore, insluitende woonplek, nie verwant is aan hulle gewilligheid om deel te neem aan die BBHWRP nie. Ten spyte van hierdie situasie is daar gevind dat kleiner gesinne en die respondente se gewilligheid om huishoudelike afval tuis te sorteer, direk verwant is aan gewilligheid om deel te neem aan die BBHWRP. Daar was egter swak responskoerse in die studie. Alhoewel herinneringbriewe gebruik is om responskoerse te verbeter, is 'n responskoers van net 30 persent behaal. Daar word aanbeveel dat 'n vaste huishoudelike afvalsorteringskema in Stellenbosch oorweeg moet word om huishoudelike afval te verminder en te herwin en om die lewensduur van die stortingsterrein te verleng.

published_or_final_version / Urban Planning / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

During the spring 2004 a pilot school recycling program was implemented within Robert E. Lee Elementary. The primary goal of the program was to determine how recycling education in the school would affect curbside recycling rates within the surrounding community. The program was a cooperative effort between the University of North Texas, City of Denton Solid Waste Department and Keep Denton Beautiful. Throughout the first months of the study during the spring 2004, an increase in curbside recycling within the Robert E. Lee Elementary attendance zone was observed, with a dramatic decrease in participation over the summer and a rapid increase once again during the second full semester of the study. In a survey conducted with 3rd and 5th grade students at the pilot project school, most students expressed positive attitudes about recycling. Students whose survey responses indicated a high level of knowledge about what could be recycled were 37% more likely to claim to recycle regularly, than those students that scored low on the knowledge portion of the survey. Although the total amount of waste generation (recyclable and non-recyclable) at Robert E. Lee Elementary did not decrease during the study, the campus was able to divert recyclable material from their trash at a much higher rate than two other local elementary campuses with paper-only recycling and no associated recycling education program. Based upon the success of the recycling program at Robert E. Lee Elementary, the City of Denton Recycling Division has agreed to move forward with offering recycling to more schools within the Denton Independent School District during the 2005-2006 school year.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1984 M84 / Master of Science

Thesis (MScEng (Process Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / Biomass is a significant renewable energy source and much research is currently being done to enable the production of biofuels and chemicals from biomass. This study looks at vacuum pyrolysis, a technology which has the potential to turn biomass, amongst other waste materials, into commercially valuable commodities. Vacuum pyrolysis is the thermal degradation of a feedstock in the absence of oxygen and under low pressure, to produce a bio-oil and char as main products, together with water and non-condensable gases. Both the oil and char have a high energy content and may be used as fuels. An incredible number of chemical compounds are also found in the oil and these compounds can be extracted and sold as high value chemicals.

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

Forty-two commercially collected dumpsters from Denton’s Municipal Solid Waste Stream were emptied, sorted and weighed to characterize the material types and make preliminary recycling policy recommendations. The general composition of Denton’s solid waste stream was not significantly different from the composition of the nation’s solid waste stream. Fifty-eight percent of the observed waste stream was recyclable. Paper made up the largest portion of recyclable materials and the "grocery" source category had more paper than any of the other five categories. Based on these findings, an incrementally aggressive approach is recommended to reduce certain types of wastes observed in the waste stream. This would include a Pay-As-You-Throw Program followed by an Intermediate Processing Center that can be converted to a Materials Recovery Facility.

A thesis submitted to the School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences (APES), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in fulfilment of the academic requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Johannesburg, February 2013 / Decades after the commencement of modern mining in the 1870s, the South African mining industry addressed the impacts associated with its mine waste deposits. In this, it followed the pattern its international peers had set. This study aims at chronicling, for the first time, the mining industry’s efforts to develop scientifically sound and replicable methods of mine waste rehabilitation. Mindful of the limitations in accessing official and public written sources for such an applied science, the study seeks to take a broader approach: It considers factors beyond pure experimental results (of which only patchy records exist), and considers the socio-economic context or the role of certain personalities, in an effort to understand the evolution of the applied technology between the 1930s until the passage of the Minerals Act in 1991. The bulk of this mine waste rehabilitation work during this period was done by the Chamber of Mines of South Africa and its members, the gold and (later) coal miners. The focus will therefore be on these sectors, although other mining sectors such as platinum will be covered when relevant. Following decades of ad hoc experimentation, concern about impending legal pollution control requirements in the 1950s spurred key gold industry players to get ahead of the curve to head off further regulation. Their individual efforts, primarily aimed at dust suppression, were quickly combined into an industry initiative located within the Chamber of Mines. This initiative became known as the Vegetation Unit. Well resourced and managed by a dynamic leader with horticultural training – William Cook – the Unit conducted large-scale and diverse experiments between 1959 and 1963 to come up with a planting and soil amelioration methodology. The initial results of this work were almost immediately published in an effort to publicise the industry’s efforts, although Cook cautioned that this was not a mature methodology and that continued research was required. The Chamber of Mines, however, was trying to head off pending air quality legislation and in 1964/65, the organisation publicly proclaimed the methodology as mature and ready for widespread application. With this decision, the Unit’s focus shifted to widespread application while its ability to advance the methodology scientifically effectively collapsed in the 1960s and early 1970s. In addition to this shift of focus and resources to application rather than continued refinement, the Unit was constrained by non-technical and non-scientific factors: Key among them was the industry’s implicit belief, and hope, that a walk-away solution had been found. The Unit’s manager Cook stood alone in driving its application and refinement for most of his time in that position. In his day-to-day work, he lacked an industry peer with whom to discuss rehabilitation results and he compounded this isolation through limited interaction with academia until very late in his career. This isolation was amplified by the lack of relevant technical knowledge among the company representatives on the committee tasked with the oversight of the Vegetation Unit: As engineers, all of them lacked not only technical understanding of the botanical and ecological challenge, some even questioned the legitimacy of the Unit’s existence into the 1980s. In addition, the concentration of all rehabilitation efforts in this single entity structurally curtailed the individual mining companies’ interest in the advancement of the methodology, creating a further bottleneck. Indeed, as late as 1973, the key metallurgy handbook covered mine waste rehabilitation only for information purposes, specifically stating that this was the responsibility of the Chamber’s Vegetation Unit alone. To some extent, the presence of a champion within the Chamber – H. Claussen – obscured some of these challenges until the early 1970s. Indeed, the Unit had acquired additional scientific capacity by this stage, which gave it the ability to renew its research and to advance its methodology. That it failed to do so was mainly due to three factors coinciding: the retirement of its internal champion Claussen, a lack of succession planning for Cook, which left the Unit on ‘auto-pilot’ when he retired, and a rising gold price, which turned industry attention away from rehabilitation towards re-treatment of gold dumps. During this period of transition in the mid 1970s, the Chamber’s approach was thus somewhat half-hearted and vulnerable to alternative, potentially cheaper, rehabilitation proposals such as physical surface sealing advanced by Cook’s eventual successor – Fred Cartwright. Though not grounded in any science, Cartwright’s proposal gained ascendance due to his forceful personality as well as the industry’s desire for an alternative to the seemingly open-ended costs associated with the existing rehabilitation methodology. During this time, the Chamber’s structures singularly failed to protect the industry’s long-term interests: The oversight committee for the Vegetation Unit, remained largely staffed by somewhat disinterested engineers, and relied heavily on a single individual to manage the Unit. Not only did the oversight committee passively acquiesce to Cartwright’s virtual destruction of the Unit’s grassing capacity, it also allowed him to stake the Chamber’s reputation with the regulator by championing an unproven technology for about five years. Only Cartwright’s eventual failure to gain regulator approval for his – still un-proven – technique led to a reluctant abandonment by the Chamber in the early 1980s. Cartwright’s departure in 1983 left the Unit (and the industry) without the capacity to address mine waste rehabilitation, at a time when emerging environmental concerns were gaining importance in social and political spheres in South Africa and across the world. The Unit sought, unsuccessfully, to build alliances with nascent rehabilitation practitioners from the University of Potchefstroom. It furthermore failed to build mechanisms for sharing technical rehabilitation knowledge with fellow southern African or international mining chambers, leading to further stagnation of its method. At the same time, up-and-coming South African competitors such as the University of Potchefstroom seized the opportunity to enter the mine waste rehabilitation field as commercial players during the mid 1980s, at a time when the Unit had been reduced to grassing dumps for a single customer, the Department of Minerals and Energy Affairs (DMEA). Using its status as a part of the Chamber of Mines, the Unit gradually regained its position of prominence through the development of industry guidelines for rehabilitation. Yet, it would never again occupy a position of pre-eminence in practical fieldwork, as industry players, academic capacities and commercial players entered the field in the mid-1980s in response to a growing environmental movement worldwide. When the passage of the Minerals Act in 1991 formally enshrined not merely rehabilitation but environmentally responsible mine closure in law, the Unit had been reduced to a prominent but no longer dominant player in this sector. This lack of pre-eminence ultimately caused the Unit to be among the first Chamber entities to be privatised when the Chamber began to restructure. This ended its role as a central driver of applied rehabilitation techniques for the South African mining sector once and for all. As this privatisation coincided with the broader opening up of South Africa’s society and economy after the unbanning of the ANC, there would never again be an entity (commercial or otherwise) that would dominate the rehabilitation sector as the Chamber’s Vegetation Unit had done in its day.