New England Landfill Celebrates Three Years without Fires

Landfills catch fire every day from several different sources, but one New England landfill has made strong efforts to prevent fires, completing a three-year streak of being fire free.

The Msunduzi Municipality in New England is celebrating three years of no fires at the landfill site. Previously, the site had been under scrutiny for repeated fires that would burn for days, plaguing the city with smoke clouds.

The fires had become so bad and frequent that the municipality had been taken to court by the SA Human Right Commission. The city was then found to be in violation of several waste and environmental acts.

However, site manager Wilson Mhlongo says that the facility had achieved this goal through several strategic interventions, preventing fires as of late.

"We ensure that when waste comes in, waste is weighed at the waste bridge. We also procured a front-end loader, an excavator, landfill compactor at R7.6 million,” said Mhlongo. "We removed waste packers on site and said, let us go and recycle waste as the source. Those are just the key strategic areas in terms of turning the situation around."

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