Johannesburg Archives

Ferial Adams: Championing Citizen Science for Clean Water

Ferial Adams, founder of WaterCAN (Water Community Action Network), is a longtime environmental justice activist with a PhD focused on citizen science. She explains how a R200 water-testing kit lets ordinary people verify contamination in their own water, giving them evidence to challenge municipalities and validation for illnesses they’d long suspected were water-related. She discusses…

Chantal Nativel: Fighting River Pollution and Restoring Johannesburg’s Rivers

Chantal Nativel leads twice-monthly volunteer cleanups of the Braamfontein Spruit in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. What began as dog walks with her German shepherd and a master’s thesis on water pollution and perimenopause grew into International Rivers Day cleanups that now draw a small, committed group pulling string, polystyrene, car parts, and even washing machines from…

Bokashi Bran and Composting South Africa: Turning Food Waste into a Resource

Bronwyn Jones, founder of Bokashi Bran, tells us about Bokashi, a Japanese fermentation method that lets people compost cooked food, meat, and dairy waste that is normally excluded from home composting and sent to landfill. But the catch is, as she explains, that food waste sent to landfill produces roughly 627kg of CO2-equivalent emissions per…

Sifiso Gumbi: Entrepreneurship, Opportunity and Building a Better South Africa

Sifiso Gumbi, a former waste picker, founded Urban Surfer to improve conditions for South Africa’s informal reclaimers. He started collecting recyclables in Soweto at 19, eventually building a buyback centre before partnering with two collaborators who saw brand potential in supporting reclaimers with proper trolleys, training and protective equipment. Sifiso describes Urban Surfer’s flagship project…