As SA prepares for its annual December holiday boom, the South African National Bottled Water Association (SANBWA) is calling for renewed commitment to recycling and responsible disposal of plastic packaging, particularly PET beverage bottles, which see a sharp spike in consumption and littering over the festive period.
With national travel increasing and temperatures rising, bottled water demand climbs significantly in December and January, creating both an opportunity and a risk: an opportunity to recover high-value PET for circular reuse, and a risk of increased pollution along highways, tourism zones and coastal destinations.
This year, SANBWA is commending its members for strengthening SA’s PET circular economy, ensuring that every bottle they produce is fully recyclable and aligned with the country’s established mechanical recycling systems. Their commitment is one of the reasons SA continues to outperform many international markets in PET recycling.
Recovered PET feeds a growing ecosystem of recyclers, converters and manufacturers that transform post-consumer bottles into new products, from fibre and textiles to food-grade recycled PET (rPET) used in new bottles. SANBWA notes that this system works because PET is designed to be recycled, widely collected and technologically compatible with local infrastructure.
However, SANBWA warns that holiday periods typically generate a pollution spike as travellers discard takeaway packaging, beverage containers and picnic waste along roadsides and in natural spaces.
SANBWA CEO Charlotte Metcalf says: “Recycling only works when the material is actually returned to the system. Litter removes value from the economy and places an avoidable burden on municipalities, marine ecosystems and communities living near high-traffic areas.”
SANBWA is urging consumers to keep a bag for recyclables, return bottles to collection points and dispose of waste responsibly at service stations and tourist sites.
“We are also reinforcing our long-standing position on so-called “biodegradable” and “compostable” plastic alternatives, which often mislead consumers into believing these materials are environmentally superior. These unverified compostable plastics in beverage packaging is not recyclable, can contaminate recycling streams, fail to break down in real-world conditions and undermine South Africa’s well-established PET recycling economy.
“International scientific consensus is increasingly clear: without controlled industrial composting conditions, which SA lacks at scale, most compostable plastics behave no differently to conventional plastics when littered.”
By contrast, PET is one of the most recycled polymers in the world. It retains value over multiple life cycles and supports circularity goals when kept within the system. SANBWA members follow science-based guidance that ensures their bottles are compatible with SA’s recycling infrastructure, free of harmful additives, labelled for recyclability and manufactured with increasingly higher percentages of rPET where feasible.
As 2025 draws to a close, SANBWA emphasises that circularity is a partnership: industry can design recyclable packaging, NGOs can support collection networks and PETCO and Polyco can drive national recovery, but the final step lies with the consumer. A bottle placed in a bin, not on the roadside, enters a value chain that creates jobs, reduces fossil-fuel demand, and protects the natural landscapes holidaymakers set out to enjoy.
“With millions of South Africans travelling over December, the choices made on the road and destinations will shape the recycling outcomes of the entire season. If every family commits to taking their waste home or placing it into a collection system, we can significantly boost PET recovery and minimise holiday pollution.”
SANBWA encourages all consumers to look for its mark when buying bottled water this summer, recycle every bottle, and help keep South Africa’s beaches, highways and nature reserves clean for the year ahead.
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Author: Petra Peacock from Chimera Communications on behalf of SANBWA.
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