2011-11-20 17:30 – Yolandi Groenewald – Johannesburg – Johannesburg has a reputation for being the world’s biggest manmade forest, boasting more than 10 million trees.
But with mine-dump dust whirling around on a windy day, the constant threat of acid mine drainage and the bleak landscapes for which the City of Gold has become famous, at first glance Jozi is not an ideal contender for South Africa’s greenest city.
And then there are the traffic jams.
Yet a new study on the greenest cities in Africa found that Johannesburg had much to offer. The city leads the pack in cutting down on electricity and planting trees, although its citizens still use an excessive amount of water and few bother to recycle.
Siemens commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to compile the African Green City Index to help understand urban sustainability.
The study compared 15 cities in Africa on environmental performance and policies across categories such as energy, carbon footprint, land use, transport, waste, water, sanitation, air quality and environmental governance.
The cities examined were Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban, Casablanca (Morocco), Tunis (Tunisia), Alexandria and Cairo (Egypt), Accra (Ghana), Lagos (Nigeria), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Nairobi (Kenya) and Maputo (Mozambique). Though the results of all 15 cities are only due to be released during the climate change summit in Durban at the beginning of next month, Dr Paul Kielstra, contributing editor of the EIU, gave City Press a preview of how well Johannesburg scores.
“The City of Johannesburg is one of the greenest cities in the index and ranks above average overall,” he said. “Its environmental performance is bolstered by having the second highest amount of green space among the 15 index cities and an extensive bus network, as well as generally robust environmental policies, especially for clean energy and congestion reduction.”
Parks Tau mayor of Johannesburg, said the city would build a green economy into its growth plan. “We have launched the biggest project on converting landfill gas to energy,” he said. But the study revealed that the city’s transport battle hampered its green rating. Johannesburg’s traffic and daily commutes have been rated as some of the worst in the world. And there is little alternative public transport.
The Rea Vaya transport system was described as a beacon of light in tackling greenhouse gases and Tau said the city was in the process of transforming its transport sector to improve air quality in the city. The study described Johannesburg’s green spaces as impressive. The city has more than 2 000 developed parks and each person has about 230m² of green space, compared with the average 74m² per person in African cities. Last year, before the soccer World Cup, the city “greened” Soweto by planting 200 000 trees. A dark patch remains Jozi’s reliance on coal. Just about 90% of the city’s energy is generated by coal. Yet the city has become quite energy efficient and has the lowest electricity consumption among South African cities – 5.6 gigajoule per person as opposed to the average of 6.4 gigajoule.
Johannesburg citizens also love water. The city had the second highest water consumption of all African cities, using 349 litres of water per person per day. The average is 187 litres. The city was also criticised for its poor recycling record.

Indeed walking my 11 month old son around my neighbourhood in the North Eastern suburbs of JHB I am often irked at the thoughtless use of sprinklers on peoples pavements. Most of the water lands up on the road. It is a sheer waste. While the people of Jozi spend plenty of time complaining about high municipal costs, crime, or poor service at public hospitals or spend hours debating Julius ‘JUJU’ Malema’s latest move few people seem to give thought to simply taking responsibility to improve their lives and do their bit for our environment and city.

Saving water is vital in our extremely water scarce city and can be so simple.Whether making use of a good old JOJO tank to harvest rainwater, reusing grey water, reducing water used for toilet flushing, recycling swimming pool backwash water or simply not wasting thousands of litres watering your road with a little thoughtfulness and perhaps help from us at Water Rhapsody every person can cut down and conserve water one way or another! As for recycling, it is fantastic that the ‘waste pickers’ are out there doing a great job for those who don’t bother to recycle.

Well done Jozi – but there is always room for massive improvements and water being the most precious resource is a great place to start!

It is astounding how disasters like these are allowed to occur. All bodies of water are in fact linked so polluting one river or stream ultimately pollutes the water table, rivers and oceans of the world. Fresh water is the most precious, yet most under appreciated, scarce and abused resource on the planet. Ironically it is also the one resource that all life requires in order to survive!

It is time all governments and individuals make water – our life source the number 1 priority! Water Rhapsody enables people and businesses to save significant amounts of water by reusing, recycling and augmenting water supply. This is achieved with our rainwater harvesting, grey water reuse, toilet multiflush and swimming pool backwash recycling systems. Our systems make one more independent from municipal supply and services saving you money on bills and taking pressure off infrastructure and supply.

- SAPA

How refreshing to hear positive news about water. It is criminal what state our water resources are in due to sheer mismanagement, waste, pollution and lack of action.

Save significant amounts of precious water with Water Rhapsody Conservation Systems. Rainwater tanks, rainrunners, and pumps are just some of the components that make up the systems we use to help you conserve water, by harvesting rainwater, reusing grey water recycling swimming pool backwash water and reducing the amount of water used for toilet flushing. We can also provide you with a municipal water back up system.

Contact us for a quote – save water – save money on municipal bills.

It indicated that less than half of South Africa’s 821 sewage works were treating billions of litres of effluent they receive each day to safe and acceptable standards. While it awards Green Drop status to 40 plants – up from 33 in 2009 – it warned that another 460 plants (56%) were either in “critical state” or delivering a “very poor performance”. Venter said some of the problems stemmed from a lack of human capacity and infrastructure. The current financial and managerial situation was also an issue for concern. “Citizens all over the world are not keen to pay for sewage removal.” On the positive side, Venter commended the department for “a tremendous amount of good work” that was being done. He cited an example of the department’s innovative plan to reward municipalities that effectively manage their water treatment plants. Of the 821 plants, a total of 40 – those awarded Green Drop status – were in an “excellent situation”. Seventy-eight were “good”, and 243 delivered an “average performance”. – SAPA

It is indeed very worrying that our precious, scarce water resources are being so badly polluted and wasted. The thought of millions of litres of untreated sewage flowing into our river systems everyday is a sickening one.

We can only hope our government stop ignoring the severe threats facing our water supply, including untreated sewage, acid mine drainage, wastage, mismanagement, ageing infrastructure and sheer scarcity. Without clean fresh water nothing and no one can survive. The least one can do as an individual is try to conserve as much water as possible, as well as augment supply during the rainy season.

This can be achieved using our Water Rhapsody conservation systems including our rainwater harvesting and grey water reuse systems among others. By collecting rain water from the roof and channelling it into a water tank before re-pressurising and pumping it back into your home for all uses can make you entirely independent of municipal supply through most of the rainy season. Our grey water reuse, toilet multiflush and swimming pool backwash recycling systems conserve water year round taking pressure off municipal supply and resulting in huge savings on water bills.

Check out our product demonstration link to see how our innovative systems work.

If indeed there is a more cost effective and smarter way to reuse or get rid of Acid mine water we are all for it. However it must be noted that when it comes to our water supply we certainly can not afford to take any chances.

South Africa’s and particularly Gauteng’s water supply is under constant threat from pollution, misuse, mismanagement, ageing infrastructure and sheer scarcity to name but a few on top of rising acid mine water. Water after all is everything. Water is life, there is no substitute for it, and nothing can survive without it. This is why conserving this precious resource needs to be a top priority for every single being.

With Water Rhapsody conservation systems one can effectively save copious amounts of water by installing our rainwater harvesting, grey water reuse and other clever systems. We have clients with a monthly municipal water bill of less than R20 during the rainy season. Saving water is both easy and rewarding; contact us to see how you can conserve water on a daily basis in both your home and business!

It also tracks access to clean, safe water and sanitation. And it warns that South Africa is heading for ­disaster unless it tackles the problem of water pollution, ­including its failing sewage treatment ­systems. It found that the situation was so bad, it called for waste-water facilities that did not comply with their licences to be prosecuted.
Water quality, the report ­stated, was excellent in metropolitan areas, but in many rural areas and towns, drinking water quality and waste-water effluent quality were frequently below the standards set.

In some areas, short-sighted planning resulted in bucket eradication schemes causing deterioration instead of ­improvement in the provision of sanitation. In some Free State settlements the replacement of buckets with waterborne systems left residents with no sanitation at all. The water supply was insufficient to flush toilets. In other places, large ­increases in sewage inflow ­volume led to overloading of waste-water treatment works and pollution of downstream river systems. The estimated current ­replacement cost of municipal water services stock, according to the report, is R169bn (R103bn for water and R66bn for sanitation). Much of this infrastructure “is not in a fit state to continue delivering high-quality and ­reliable water services”. The widely held belief in South Africa was that water service “backlogs” concerned those who did not have access to services in the past. Yet other needs “far surpass” these, the report said. This ­included the rehabilitation, ­replacement or provision of ­neglected sanitation infrastructure.

The capital required to ­address infrastructure backlogs made up 17% of total infrastructure requirements, the ­report stated. By comparison, the rehabilitation or replacement of neglected infrastructure ran to “a staggering 49%”. The failure of many ­municipalities to deliver reliable sanitation services was mainly due to poor leadership and ­inadequate budgets, skills and experience. Many health problems were the direct result of the collapse of existing sanitation systems. Untreated, polluted drinking water was a major contributor to diarrhoea-related deaths and diseases, the report said. Johan Erasmus, operational manager of Mahlatsi Enterprises, a firm contracted by the ­department of water affairs to monitor water purification plants in Mpumalanga, warned that many of them were in a ­“disastrous” state. These municipalities, he said, never took seriously their duty to deliver clean water and proper ­sanitation to people. “They never budgeted money for this; not for maintenance and also not for new plants. In many cases we discovered that the town manager had not even purchased the chemicals ­needed for their water ­purification plants.” He added that very few of the water and/or water purification plant officials he had to deal with had the qualifications or the experience to do their jobs properly. “None of the water ­purification plants was up to standard because the personnel were not up to standard.” The result, he said, was ­“horrifying” – raw sewage ­running down the streets of small towns like Evander.  Bethal’s water, he said, was so bad that farmers could not use it for irrigation. – City Press

At this rate it seems the only way to secure clean and safe water for home use is to take matters into your own hands.

Water Rhapsody’s clever rainwater harvesting system enables one to augment their own water supply during the rainy season. With the use of water tanks, pumps, pressure vessels, our rainrunners and other parts our system is designed to re-pressurise and pump the water back into your home for daily use. With the aid of some clever filtration systems you can drink the water too. This means in Gauteng where we have a good 6 odd months of rain each year you can be almost entirely independent of a municipal supply. This is a most rewarding practice and reduces municipal water bills saving money too.

Our toilet multiflush system is simple but highly effective saving huge amounts of water. This system also takes pressure off sanitation works with hugely reduced sewage effluent flowing into ageing municipal infrastructure.

Click on our product demonstration link to see how our rainwater harvesting system works, as well as our grey water reuse system for irrigation, grey water reuse for toilet flushing, toilet multiflush and swimming pool backwash recycling systems.