Duncan Village Secondary Recycling Cooperative

Collects and processes organic waste into valuable nutrients.
2013 SEED South Africa Award; European Union
Waste Management
Morgan Bay
South Africa

Duncan Village Recycling Secondary Cooperative (DVRS) captures the entire bio-waste value chain by establishing composting facilities linked to a highly productive organoponic system of urban food production. It covers its expenses by collecting waste and is thus a sustainable business model for source separation of waste at a household level. DVRS also receives revenues from food production, the resale of fresh produce to the community where the collection of source-separated waste takes place, and recycling the collected dry waste streams.

Eco-Inclusive Impacts
By using best practices in food composting and urban food production, the enterprise contributes to improving community waste management whilst also avoiding 1.5 tons of food waste going to landfills each day.
  • Providing training, skills and jobs to over 150 people, 60 % of them women.
  • Providing waste collection services to low-income communities currently with poor or erratic municipal waste collection.
  • Collecting and recycling source-separated waste from 5,000 households.
  • Producing over 250 tons of low-carbon food with 2 hectares of organoponic urban food gardens and reducing “food miles” to “food metres”.
  • Providing a sustainable model for replicating waste separation at source and recycling in other towns and cities.
  • Helping divert money from food purchases of imported fresh produce to local food production.

Partners

The Duncan Village Secondary Recycling Cooperative collects and recycles organic waste, processing it into valuable nutrients i.e. compost, vermi-compost, organic food, and biogas, enabling communities to capture the full value of their organic waste resources. By using best practices in food composting and urban food production, the enterprise contributes to improve community waste management.

Element Consulting Engineers is responsible for building, operating and transferring the composting facility two hectares of organoponic urban food gardens and the community food stalls.

Growing Power NPC is an NGO providing agro-ecological training and technical support.

East London Industrial Development Zone supports the project by incubating two hectares of organoponic food gardens on its premises and providing funding support.

DNF Waste & Environmental Services provides technical support for expanding source-separated waste collection from 1,000 households to 5,0000 households and for recycling of non-organic resources.