Circular Economy & Waste Management
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Recycling Day raises the question: Where is SA’s waste plan?
Global Recycling Day on 18 March once again placed the spotlight on recycling. But beyond the awareness campaigns, South Africa’s waste crisis reveals a far more complex problem, one that current strategies are failing to address.
Stacey Jansen of REDISA. (Image supplied.)
A strategy that still falls short
Recently, the draft National Waste Management Strategy (NWMS) 2026 was published for commentary.
The NWMS is meant to provide a roadmap for addressing the country’s waste crisis, but it simply does not do this.
The 2026 draft is intended to replace the previous strategy published in 2020. Government’s own reporting on the 2020 NWMS shows just three targets were achieved, while 56 showed little or no progress.
More concerning is that in the 2026 draft, the headline waste diversion targets set for the following 15 years in the 2020 strategy have simply been diluted and rolled forward another five years.
A plan built on shaky data
The most troubling issue lies not only in the ambition of the draft strategy, but in the data it is based on. A plan built on shaky numbers is not a plan.
The South African Waste Information System (SAWIS), one of the government’s primary data sources for the strategy, contains figures that are wholly implausible.
Just one example: according to SAWIS, the Western Cape generated over 1.8m tonnes of Health Care Risk Waste in 2023.
For comparison, the entire United Kingdom’s National Health Service produces roughly 156,000 tonnes a year. Unless the Western Cape has somehow become the global epicentre of medical procedures, the numbers are nonsensical.
The illusion of strong recycling rates
Yet the NWMS leans heavily on data like this. The other primary source is the outdated 2018 State of Waste Report, a document fraught with contradictions and misleading statistics.
For instance, the claim that South Africa recycles 43.7% of its plastics is, on closer inspection, the percentage of plastics available for recycling that is recovered from the waste stream — counted before substantial processing wastage.
This is not a realistic definition. If the correct definition — recycled material output as a percentage of total plastic produced — is used, the rate drops to 17.5%.
Similarly, the reported 71.2% recycling rate for glass includes returnable bottles, which are reused, not recycled. The real figure for glass is closer to 35%.
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Broken systems behind the numbers
When data is unreliable, the targets built on that data become meaningless. The NWMS 2026 does not propose any solutions to the systemic issues that make accurate reporting difficult.
Most municipal facilities lack functioning weighbridges. Many do not have access control. Others do not report at all. Without fixing these fundamentals, no strategy can succeed.
Ambition without a funding plan
Compounding this is the draft strategy’s failure to outline how it will be financed. Ambition without funding is political theatre, and the NWMS reads more like a list of hopes than a costed, implementable plan.
There is no credible model for ring-fencing environmental levies or Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) fees — mechanisms that have proven effective globally.
Currently, a waste tyre levy is collected, yet less than half of those funds are used for waste tyre management. Similarly, none of the plastic bag levies — more than R5bn to date — have been applied to establishing recycling facilities, despite claims in the National Budget Review.
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A proven model that was undone
What makes this even more frustrating is that South Africa has already shown how an effective EPR system can work. Between 2013 and 2017, the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) ran an independent tyre recycling programme that transformed an entire waste stream.
It created more than 3,000 jobs, supported 226 small businesses, built 22 waste tyre storage depots, and diverted 306,000 tonnes of waste from landfills. It demonstrated that when industry levies are ring-fenced, independently managed, and overseen by regulators — rather than controlled by them — recycling systems can flourish.
But the programme was dismantled by the Zuma government in 2017, with control shifted to the state. Many collectors and transporters lost their jobs, and progress in tyre recycling slowed significantly.
Research indicates that effective management of just 13 of South Africa’s waste streams could grow GDP by up to 1.5 percentage points. In a country struggling with slow economic growth, this should be a powerful incentive for reform.
Beyond symbolic days
Global Recycling Day should not be reduced to a moment of self-congratulation built on inflated statistics and uncosted plans. Under the leadership of Minister Willie Aucamp, there is an opportunity for the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment to take a more serious approach to waste management.
The consequences of poor data, weak governance, and inconsistent implementation are not only environmental — they are economic.
About Stacey Jansen
Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA)
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