WATCH | Surfing the streets with waste pickers, SA's unsung heroes

They are the unsung heroes who wake up at three in the morning, filter into the streets and set out to travel up to 50km in one day as they risk their lives sweeping around bends, down hills and past impatient drivers on the road.

Collecting what others dispose of with no regard, they embody the spirit of "one man's junk is another man's treasure".

Partnering up with Corona and Parley for the Oceans, pro surfer and ocean activist Frank Solomon set out to educate the public on the important role these men play in addressing the global plight of plastic pollution.

In the local documentary Street Surfers, released last month, Solomon travels to Joburg to meet these surfers of another kind - waste pickers who scour the streets and landfills for recyclables that would otherwise end up in the ocean. Here, he encounters street surfers Mokete Mokete and Thabo Mouti.

"For me the idea was to connect big-city life and the ocean. A lot of people are disconnected from the ocean and when you live in a big city like Johannesburg the ocean seems like a long way away," says Solomon.

"The message we were trying to get across was that the plastic and the waste that we make every day and that we throw on the ground has an impact on the environment."

Feeling disconnected from what happens in the oceans, people living in cities don't realise that the scourge of ocean plastic pollution begins in the cities, flowing down rivers and lakes and ending up in the ocean.

According to the department of environmental affairs, there are about 62,000 waste pickers in SA, some of them operating from landfills that are filling up and others operating as trolley pushers - or street surfers. They collect between 80% and 90% of post-consumer material and save municipalities up to R750m in landfill space each year.

But, despite the good these waste pickers do, they operate in the worst of conditions and face health and safety challenges.

"The biggest takeaway for me on this whole thing was ... they're doing such an incredible thing for the environment but they're living in abject poverty," says Solomon.

Mokete and Mouti live in a community with other waste pickers and their families. Here, there is no electricity, no running water and no toilets. To make just R300 they have to collect up to 100kg of recyclables.

"The guys took me back to where they live and I think that very few people know that places like this even exist. The whole camp of thousands of people revolves around recycling our trash."

In a gesture to reciprocate Mokete and Thabo's willingness to show him their world, Solomon took them to Cape Town to show them his and to bring home the amazing impact they're having on his corner of the world, despite doing their good work in Johannesburg.

Environmentalist Catherine Constantinides says a film like this is a wonderful visual tool to connect people on the ground.

"So often we drive on the streets of Johannesburg and we're harassed by the fact that there's someone pulling a trolley of waste, but what we don't understand is that behind that waste there's a human being trying to make a living and feed their family," she says.

In understanding the waste footprint we leave as individuals, many of us don't realise that there are people in that waste chain that really assist us.

"It connects one human being to another. It allows us to really question our waste footprint," says Constantinides.

It makes a connection between what we consume and what we throw away and what we can be doing between those actions. More than doing our part, we can give dignity back to these street surfers by doing something as simple as separating our waste.

"One thing Mokete said to me was they also just want respect from people. They feel like when they're on the roads people try and knock them over and think it's funny. If they just had some respect from the general public I think that would also go a long way," says Solomon.

Sifiso Pule, Corona's zone marketing manager, says that while these street surfers are recycling as a means to earn an income, the effects of their efforts have resulted in SA being ranked as one of the best performing countries when it comes to recycling - despite being a country that places very little emphasis on recycling.

"In the midst of this crisis that we all face, that paradise is facing extinction at our hands, there is a story of hope that as much as we're all complicit in this issue, we're all responsible and therefore we can make a change," says Pule.

"We produced the film to tell the nation and the world about these heroes and to remind everyone that we all have a part to play in protecting our paradise. It is a collective effort."