Those who braved the stormy elements were kept warm and cosy by a fire and a gas heater. There was plenty to eat and drink to also keep us warm. 

Some of the audience.                                         David Muller introducing Melumzi.

We were given some interesting and maybe disturbing insights on how the Cape Town landfill sites are rapidly filling up, with mainly packaging materials we generate from our consuming lifestyle.

Melumzi showed us some of the ideas he is working on to try and solve part of the problem.

He also asked all Cape Town residents to think about what we buy, if we really need it, where it comes from, how it was produced and especially if it has packaging how are we going to dispose of it, and where.
Can it be recycled? Can it be reused? Can we reduce what we actually need?

Currently Cape Town has the cheapest landfill rates of all the cities in RSA. In the world we are the cheapest and this is going to change very soon.
Each southern suburb resident of Cape Town generates 900kg of waste per year, which is dumped in the Muizenberg Landfill site. Melumzi's records show this is one of the highest in the world, mainly because recycling is not taking place. He expained it is a chicken and egg situation, processing facilities have been set-up to process a variety of materials and have not survived finacially because related industries were or are not in place to release finished material or products for processing or manufacturing.

An explanation he gives is that "we" have not changed our thinking and behaviour patterns. 
A question "Is our lifestyle sustainable?" he asks.

The increasing landfill site tonnages.          A diagram of how a biodigestor works.
That is Million tonnes.

A working biodigestor was shown in Belville, which generates electricity at a very economic rate. He gave figures which showed 800MW of electicity is generated in the USA annualy just with biodigestors. This is twice as much electricity that Eskom generates per annum. He showed Germany produces most of its electricity by means of biogas.

Meumzi suggests it is possible to build a small biogas plant to supply electricity for the southern suburbs even in these economic times, and the user costs would be as cheap as we are currently paying (June 2009). Electricity costs are going up dramatically in July 2009.

Melumzi listening to one of the many questions.           Steven Jacobs from Living Wealth.

Steven Jacobs from Living Wealth was brought along by Melumzi, and he has had some interesting questions for us.

 Is our current lifestyle sustainable?

He gave us a short presentation on an overview his company has devised as a business solution with structured plans to change business operations to become sustainable entities.

Most will agree we cannot continue to do things the way we have always done. A paradigm shift and behaviour change has to occur and soon.

What are you doing or going to do about it?