Sustainable development of waste management in Rustenburg, South Africa : Creating value through waste management

Changing world and amount of waste is a big concern in today’s world. Many businesses, countries and cities are creating strategies to be more sustainable. One of these cities is Rustenburg in South Africa. Between the years 2017 and 2018 Lahti University of Applied Sciences has worked together with Rustenburg and Ho (Ghana) aim to create sustainable cities. Name of this project was Co-creating Sustainable Cities. Moving to the circular economy means moving away from old and traditional model called linear economy. Characteristic of the linear economy has been - and still is - low-cost production and goods with low level of reuse. This causes a large amount of waste from the markets while circular economy focuses on cutting the amount of waste or more specifically, using the waste as a source of production. Circular economy activities play a key role in the creation of a sustainable city and therefore is important to understand the reasons for the transition to the circular economy and the possible effects of it. This thesis focuses on the future sustainability of the municipality and creating value through it. Five of the well-known circular economy models have been selected in this thesis and main model in this thesis is recovery and recycling. Used research methods are qualitative research methods. For creating reliability to the study qualitative methods are used because the author has been close with the research problem. Used data sources are primary data and secondary data. Primary data is collected via author's observation and interviews. Secondary data of the thesis has been previous publications, mostly reliable books. Key findings of the thesis are taking account of social conditions when developing sustainable waste management operations. Research has often highlighted the importance of three main objectives in developing of sustainable development and future. These three main objects are economic, social and environment. Every country and municipality have their own environment. In Rustenburg, developing of waste management includes formalization of the informal sector where operates informal recyclers making their livelihood thru it but actions are not controlled at all. Conclusions made from key findings are the big role of the environment and society. Well-developed plan and actions will create different types of value for the city, for the economy and for the citizen - as long it is designed paying attention influencers like environment and society