Imagine 1700 black bags of rubbish loose on the streets of Muizenberg, blowing in the wind down streets, onto the beach, into Zandvlei… That’s the number of bags of litter and sand collected and removed by MID’s cleaning and greening top-up service during the month of February 2017 alone!
NCC Environmental Services is the service provider for MID’s cleaning and greening top-up services, and a very specific strategy is employed to ensure neat and clean public spaces:
The MID area is divided into 4 priority areas depending on factors like volume of daily visitors, litter hotspots, tourist hotspots, number of planted gardens, and potential crime hotspots:
Area One, the Beach area, obviously experiences a lot of sand build-up, and littering near the beach is always high. In addition, the Atlantic Road area gets extra attention due to the litter build-up as a result of street people living in this area.
Sand build-up in Beach Road.
Area Two, the strip next to Main Road, has its fair share of bin pickers to deal with and some shops are still not practicing good waste management: the team works to contain overflowing bins and to move items dumped next to bins to designated collection areas.
Clearing gutters in the lane next to the railway reserve.
Area Three, the Village, Church Road remains a challenge to keep clean, and illegal dumping also occurs quite frequently. The other main issue here is cleaning up on bin day after bin pickers.
Dumping in Church Road, a regular occurrence – this street is the most challenging street in the MID area when it comes to cleaning.
Area Four, around Royal Road and Zandvlei is quite quiet – the main issues currently are sand build-up and a focus on reducing weeds.
In Area One the MID top-up services complement the work that the City’s Solid Waste department does. Areas Two, Three and Four would not be serviced at all without MID which is the primary street cleaning service. And in addition to dealing with cleaning up the NCC team also looks after various formal and informal gardens ensuring they are maintained, weeded, and watered (as possible with the current water constraints).
Pruning in Milner Road.
For more info on the cleaning and greening program visit https://www.mid.org.za/cleaning-maintenance/.
About MID:
manager@mid.org.za