The eThekwini municipality is teetering on the brink of a messy situation with garbage filling up its dumps at "an alarming rate".
At least 3 000 tons of waste is dumped at the city's dumping sites every day and it is threatening to overflow soon at landfills in La Mercy, Springfield Park and Mariannhill, officials said.
A full council sitting is to discuss the matter this week.
A concerned Karen Read, a councillor from the eThekwini Eco-Peace green party, has raised the matter and has proposed that urgent solutions be sought.
Several remedial options, including recycling and composting, have been discussed by stakeholders and concerned citizens.
Read believes the council could choose to encourage residents to make compost of bio-degradable refuse, and that recycling had not been afforded serious attention. Recycling would result in positive spin-offs for the region and become a source of income for small-scale recyclers, she believes.
However, John Parkin, the municipality's landfills manager, was not as excited about these two suggestions.
If implemented, such methods would leave the cash-strapped ratepayer down-and-out, he said. He based his reservations on recycling in the United States and Europe where transportation of refuse was heavily milking government coffers.
In addition, recycling of refuse would go only a short distance in dealing with the problem, as only a mere 10 percent of recycled solid waste would be reusable.
With regard to composting, he said that route had been barricaded in the past through the passing of by-laws after health hazards had been found to be associated with it. Only a handful of people were capable of composting properly, he said.
Parkin added that in KwaZulu-Natal there was not that big a demand for compost because the region was relatively drought-free.
"You will find we have to transport compost to other provinces, and that would require a lot of money in transport costs," he said.
Parkin said the matter was a complex one, and indicated that a thorough investigation had to be done.