GrandWest creates sustainable green solutions to waste generation

Sun International's GrandWest Casino and Entertainment World (GrandWest) in Cape Town features two hotels, 10 restaurants, a coffee shop, two lounges and a bar area all serving light meals, 14 fast food outlets and four custom snack shops, conference facilities and a staff canteen catering for approximately 3316 people daily.

Sustainable solutions

However, for GrandWest the answer was startlingly simple. The casino built a worm farm to deal with the waste, and then established a 5000 m² indigenous nursery, vegetable and herb garden, all nourished by the worm compost. The produce will in turn be sold back to the restaurants and the communities, and will be run by community owner-managers as a profitable enterprise.

According to GrandWest CSI manager Heidi Edson, "Few people realise that waste sent to landfill sites can take up to 30 years to decompose whereas earthworms take care of that waste in a matter of days. But when we first asked how we could reduce our waste we could not have envisaged how it would develop into the 360 degree enterprise development project that it has now become.

"Practically, the nursery will reduce our waste and our landscaping costs but equally important, it will contribute to the survival of rare plants and will provide jobs and an entrepreneurial opportunity for people in the community."

Work on the project began in February 2012 and the nursery opened to the public on 1 May 2013.

Ins and outs of the worm farm

Daily kitchen waste is sorted at the restaurants, from where it is delivered to the nursery site to be stored in a sealed tip for roughly two months until it is further broken down. From that point it is transferred to one of five worm tanks, each cleverly constructed from refrigerator parts, especially for GrandWest. The combination of thick outer casing, interior insulation and inner aluminium seal of the panels makes them ideal for this purpose. As temperature extremes can kill the worms it is vital that each unit maintains a constant temperature inside. Most worm farms have to be contained in structures to protect them from heat and cold. The earthworm farms at Grand West can process waste while ensuring the earthworms are kept in a constant and ideal temperature.

The earthworm activity produces a combination of either liquid vermitea or solid vermicompost and vermicompost balls, all of which offer a rich, nutrient-packed, chemical-free organic alternative to many commercial products. They also contain more nitrogen, potassium, calcium, magnesium and phosphorous than regular topsoil and, good news for gardeners, they also increase water infiltration and retention in soil. Interestingly too, earthworms tend to avoid soil that has been dug over with regular compost.

Liquid Vermitea and solid Vermicompost are produced from the kitchen waste. Depending on the moisture content of the feed, vermitea starts to flow two to three weeks after initial feeding begins.

The benefits of solid Vermicompost, Vermicompost balls and Vermitea are well-documented and scientific studies have shown plants fed either of the Vermi products are stronger and more resistant to disease. GrandWest will purchase the vermi products from the nursery for use in their gardens, and the remainder will be available to visitors to the nursery.

The vegetable garden

With the worm farm in place it was a natural progression of thought to consider a vegetable garden to supply the needs of the onsite restaurants which experience shortages of key fresh ingredients at certain times of year. Caterers and restaurants on complex were delighted by the prospect of being able to offer fresh, organically grown vegetables and herbs free from synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. GrandWest further developed the idea of expanding the vegetable garden to also provide food for the local community and employment at the same time. Excess produce will also be donated to needy causes.

Fresh vegetables grown on site include carrots, cabbage, butternut, sweet peppers, green beans, avocado, tomato, lettuce, rocket, spinach, rosemary and other herbs. These will be expanded to include other products.

Fynbos cultivation

A less well known fact about GrandWest is that the architecture and decor pays homage to the character, culture, legend and history of Cape Town. All the facades are recreations of old buildings which once stood in the city, and the Hendrik Boom Garden inside the complex pays respect to the creator of the Company Gardens and the world-famous Kirstenbosch Gardens.

It had long been GrandWest's intention to extend their homage to the region to include the local flora as well, and gardens at the complex are slowly being converted to 90% fynbos. Not only do these plants offer a waterwise option but some are from the endangered Sandveld Fynbos biome, so propagation will contribute to the survival of a number of rare and endangered plants.

Botanists and environmentalists encourage gardeners to include indigenous and endemic plants in their gardens to further encourage greater biodiversity and GrandWest aims to provide roughly 4000 competitively priced plants for sale each month. Two months prior to opening, the first order for fynbos plants was received for approximately R5000.

Propagation takes place on site and young clippings and seedlings are nurtured in a special environmentally friendly greenhouse, before being planted out into a sheltered 'hardening off' area, after which they are transferred to large plastic nursery bags to be cared for in a plant layout area, and then sold to retailers and gardeners alike.

At this stage, the fynbos that cultivators will propagate include Cliffortia ericifolia*, Coleonema alba, Elegia tectorum, Erica verticillata*, Eriocephalus Africana, Gymnosporia buxifolia, Helichrysum dasyanthum, Helichysum petiolare "limelight", Helicrysum cymosum, Lampranthus emarginatus, Lampranthus reptans*, Leonotis leonorus, Leucadendron levisanus*, Leucaspermum cordifolia, Lobelia anceps, Morella cordifolia, Muraltia spinosa, Orphium frutecsens, Passerina palacea , Passerina paludosa*, Pelargonium betulinum, Phylica ericoides, Portulacaria afra, Psoralea glaucena*, Rhus crenata, Scabiosa incise, Serruria foeniculacia*, Sutherlandia frutescens. (* Endangered species)

A CSI opportunity

GrandWest CSI manager Heidi Edson explains, "As the nursery project grew so we recognised the importance of teaching youngsters about our fynbos heritage. The Western Cape is one of only six floral kingdoms in the world. It is the smallest of the world's floral regions, the richest in floral species and diversity, and the only one to be contained within one country, even though it occupies less than 6% of South Africa. It became apparent then how important it is to preserve this natural heritage and the idea of using our fynbos nursery as a school to educate children grew from there.

"We envisage school participation through our current Environmental Programme which highlights certain environmental days such as Wetland day. Through our Elsies River cleanup programme, schools are identified according to their interest in environmental issues and are invited to participate in projects we initiate.

"We will also be hosting outdoor classrooms from June. Youngsters from schools within our catchment areas, such as Ruyterwacht and Elsies River, will be given small starter packs of vermitea and vermicompost which they can use at home or at school."

Two experienced community members, Velisile Arosi and Sipho Masebeni, have been appointed from the community to run the project and within time will take over ownership and complete running of the nursery:

• Velisile Arosi
  Arosi's mother, Florence Arosi, started growing vegetables thirty years ago to feed her four sons and four daughters in Crossroads. In 1996, Florence turned her backyard garden into a business, which has been flourishing ever since. Although Velisile Arosi spent many hours helping his mother in the garden, his love for nature only developed in 2005 when he took his first landscaping job. Arosi has one five-year old son who lives with him in Philippi. Working at GrandWest gives him an opportunity to turn what he loves into a business.
  
• Sipho Masebeni
  Masebeni was born in the Transkei. He moved to Cape Town and finished his matric at Masiyile High School in Khayelitsha. He has a fondness for computers, but a passion for fynbos. Masebeni is particularly interested in saving endangered plant species and has been involved in rehabilitation projects for the City of Cape Town. He is very proud of the nursery at Grand West and watches over the thousands of fynbos plants as gently as he does his four children. He now lives in Old Cross Roads.

Further environmental efforts

The nursery is located in a southern corner of the 56-hectare property, next to a large wetland also created by the casino to prevent water run-off into the environmentally-compromised Elsies River Canal which borders GrandWest. The man-made wetland is one of seven on the property which now offers refuge to 38 different bird species who breed there. Other GrandWest environmental initiatives include saving the melted water from the ice-rink to be reused in the gardens and an annual staff clean up of the Elsies River Canal and surrounds which often gets littered from people visiting the nearby Goodwood station.

Speaking of the entire initiative, Edson said, "At GrandWest we're committed to conserving our environment and making a difference by introducing practical initiatives and objectives that we can measure. Two specific objectives include reducing our waste to landfill by five percent and eradicating alien plants.

"This particular project goes a long way in meeting these environmental objectives that we have set for ourselves. The worm farm recycles the food waste which would normally end up at the landfill while the nursery creates a platform for us to introduce our own indigenous plant species back into our gardens.

"Our long-term vision is also to see our two community members who are running the nursery "give back" to their community. There are longer term plans for them to donate two days of their time each month to transferring knowledge and skills to their communities in Langa."

For further information, email moc.lanoitanretninus.az@smaharba.idieh.