H O T S E AT | e WA S T E
Taking a HOLISTIC APPROACH to e-WASTE What services do you offer?
How formalised is South Africa’s e-waste industry and what’s the best way to grow it?
South Africa’s electrical and electronic equipment (e-waste) industr y offers huge potential for SMMEs and largerscale businesses within the circular economy. ReSource speaks to Malcolm Whitehouse, general manager at AST Recycling, about the company’s strategic vision as an e-waste, IT asset management and IT asset disposal leader. 10
FEBRUARY 2021
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ReSource
MW The e-waste industr y in South Africa remains fragmented and the legislative framework to regulate it is still in progress. To move for ward, we need a formalised and integrated strategy from government that can be implemented and practised uniformly so that ever y par ticipant across the supply chain is empowered, be they OEMs, informal waste pickers, SMMEs or specialist e-waste recyclers like AST. According to the latest e-Waste Association of South Africa (eWASA) repor t, only 7% to 12% of e-waste is being formally recycled. Clearly, this indicates that there’s a great deal of informal activity, since eWASA estimates that South Africa generates about 6.2 kg of e-waste per inhabitant annually. E-waste is a secondar y resource material. You can recover up to 99% of what’s in any device, so the market is there if we can mobilise it more ef fectively as an industr y.
What are AST’s e-waste ISO credentials? We’re a pioneer in fully integrated ITAM/ITAD (IT asset management/IT asset disposal) and final e-waste recycling in South Africa. In addition to our Second-Hand Goods licences, we are ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 27001 cer tified. We are also preparing for ISO 45001 cer tification, in addition to ISO 37000 and ISO 44001, the latter two are more specifically focused on anti-briber y and anti-corruption, as well as collaborative relationships – which are especially impor tant for our international business expansion. We also adhere to the Basel Convention.
We’ve expanded our business to provide a holistic bouquet of ser vices. In this respect, our ser vices extend beyond e-waste recycling to include a full turnkey solution comprising ITAM and ITAD. Our ITAM ser vices include a review of current software and hardware used, ensuring licensing compliance, tracking how ICT assets are being used and where changes may be needed. We also assess a client’s existing software to determine network security. Our goal is to maximise cost ef ficiencies and ROI within an organisation’s ICT environment. We follow globally accepted best practice standards in terms of all our refurbishment protocols. We are also a registered supplier of new ICT equipment. On refurbished and disposed products, data sanitisation software ensures that any information is not forensically recoverable, helping us and our clients to fully comply with the POPI (No. 4 of 2013) Act.
What’s the potential market for South Africa and Africa? The circular economy model is not an academic debate – it’s a well proven and vital system for recycling and reusing ever y commodity we can. In South Africa, we believe there’s an annual potential of close to R2 billion (assuming and based on known volumes of ICT e-waste placed on the market currently). The environmental imperatives are clear. In addition to this, there’s the massive potential to create a vibrant e-waste industr y that could create thousands of new jobs. Post Covid-19, we believe our business model will be a major factor in helping to stimulate socio-economic growth within our sector. We currently have a client base of around 3 500 customers. If you just factor this by four employees per entity, that’s around 14 000 people that benefit monthly.
