In the Spotlight: South Africa’s WEEE Policy Development Journey

South Africa’s waste management sector has been on a wild ride of legislative changes. We’re talking about the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Regulations, which have opened up a whole new world of waste management possibilities aimed at furthering a circular economy.

By Susanne Karcher*

The last few years in South Africa have been marked by a row of breakthrough legislative changes in the waste management sector.

The enforcement of Section 18 of the NEMWA (No. 59 of 1998) in November 2021 introduced Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Regulations to producers for a range of very different product categories placed on the South African market.

These imported or locally produced goods and materials include paper and packaging, lighting equipment, waste electronic and electrical equipment (WEEE), and, more lately, oils, portable batteries and even pesticides. While there are seemingly few similarities between these products and materials, they all have the potential to end up as problematic waste types at the end of their useful life, if not regulated separately so that their recovery, take-back and treatment are somewhat guaranteed.

In addition to the introduction of the EPR Regulations, WEEE, as well as lighting waste (the latter as early as 2016), was also declared as ‘undesirables’ on South African landfills and subsequently banned for landfill disposal – a fact that is still widely unknown and/or simply disregarded given limited feasible alternatives to handle problematic fractions alternatively.

What South Africa has been lacking to date though is a ‘home’ for all WEEErelated legislation, by-law components and development strategies already in existence and going forward. And this ‘home’ is currently being established in the form of an overarching WEEE policy framework for South Africa.

The WEEE policy is due to be completed and then subsequently put out for public comment by the end of 2023. Another piece of important future WEEE management legislation is currently also being crafted in the form of minimum requirement-based norms and standards for all WEEE operators and/or their facilities in the South African WEEE management chain. This is due to be completed in early 2024.

While both the national WEEE policy and closely related norms and standards are currently still some ‘work in progress’, a baseline report, documenting the South African policy development process was completed by the SRI team in March 2023 and subsequently published on the SRI website.

Not only does it provide deep insight into the current South African policy development process, but it is also comparing the applied methodology and envisaged outcomes to international policy development strategies.

The key motivation for compiling the baseline document has been twofold. First, to plot step by step the assumed WEEE policy development journey for South Africa within the existing socio-economic and legal landscape. This includes describing the key status quo elements listed below, which all directly inform the overall policy aim, objectives and the envisaged outcomes captured in the study: