The Durban Metropolitan Area's growing population and economy are resulting in increasing levels of waste production. The majority of this is currently disposed of in landfill sites, but existing disposal capacity is limited. Poor disposal of waste is having significant negative impacts on the natural environment and potentially on community health. The Durban Metropolitan Council is actively involved in promoting integrated waste management in the city, and in identifying additional regional landfill sites to ensure adequate capacity in the future.	What can you do to improve the situation
	About Indicators In this Waste Report In this SOE Report Global Set
The growth in the Durban Metropolitan Area's population and economy has resulted in increasing levels of waste production throughout the city. Pressures promoting the unsafe disposal of this waste include increasing costs of waste disposal and the poor servicing of some informal settlements in the outer regions of the DMA.
The Durban Metropolitan Area (DMA) produces over 1.8 million tonnes of waste a year, the majority of which is disposed of in landfill sites. In the DMA, affluent communities produce up to 13 times more waste per person than poor communities. Commercial and industrial activities are the main sources of hazardous waste. There is currently adequate capacity to dispose of domestic and low hazardous waste in DMA, but future capacity is limited. The DMA has 6 operational landfill sites of which 4 are general waste sites and 2 are low hazard co-disposal sites.
Poor disposal of waste in some areas of the Durban Metropolitan Area has had significant negative impacts on many aspects of the natural environment as well as negatively impacting on the health of some communities and tourism.
The Durban Metropolitan Council is actively involved in promoting integrated waste management for the metropolitan area. This includes promoting recycling and waste minimisation where feasible, identifying safe sites for future land disposal and improving management of existing landfill sites. The new Durban Metropolitan Environmental Policy sets out a range of objectives to address the metropolitan area's waste management issues in the future. This is supported by new national and provincial policy in promoting an integrated approach to waste management.