South Africa’s E-waste Opportunities

• CNN’s Marketplace Africa explores South Africa’s e-waste opportunities

In the latest episode of Marketplace Africa, CNN delves into the opportunities being established in South Africa to tackle the growing problem of e-waste. According to the Global E-waste Statistics Partnership as of 2022, of the estimated 3.5 million metric tonnes of e-waste generated in Africa, less than 1% is collected. South Africa is one of just a handful of African countries that has regulations around the recycling of e-waste.

CNN meets with Lucille Charles, the General Manager of EPR Waste Association of South Africa (eWASA). She explains how eWASA make electronic companies take responsibility for their products, “eWASA is a Producer Responsibility Organization, referred to as a PRO. And we are mandated under Section 18 of the EPR regulations in NEMWA, which is the National Environmental Waste Management Act. What we seek out to do is to assist our members, who are producers, such as manufacturers, importers, brand owners, achieve their compliance mandate.”

The electronic products from these companies tend to end up at places such as registered e-waste recyclers. One such place is Desco Electronic Recyclers. Their Managing Director, Giulio Airaga, explains part of their recycling process, “Electronic waste comes in as a full product. The later products mainly consist of plastics, but the higher value material is made out of metal. Your product is dismantled into different commodities or fractions. We focus specifically on plastic granulation, cable granulation and circuit board grinding.”

For Desco, the priority is the recovery of valuable materials, however Reclite has a different focus. Steffen Schröder, Reclite’s Managing Director, explains their alternative focus, “We process all electronic waste, but we specialise on treating hazardous electronic waste … we recycle PV modules, lithium-ion batteries, household batteries, heat exchange equipment, refrigerant gas, normal ICT, your household electronics, small, large domestic appliances, fridges, you name it. If it goes into a plug or it runs on a battery, we recycle it.”

While Schröder acknowledges that the hazardous waste he recycles constitutes a tiny fraction of a big problem, he sees e-waste recycling across Africa as one of the greatest business opportunities of the 21st century, telling CNN “Africa has a much faster growing e-waste market because the buying potential of this new population is much higher than the previous generation. So, we believe it’s an absolute opportunity across the entire continent to create employment and a sustainable environment.”

The correct training is paramount and a big goal for Reclite involves training small informal recyclers, such as Lucas Motsiothata Semata. Semata is the Owner of TLC recyclers, a company that, “Recycles e-waste. All redundant non-working computers, printers, and all the equipment, telecommunication, all batteries.”

Semata continues on why recycling is so important to him, “Recycling has changed my life because I’m feeding a lot of people around me, and even these people who are disabled, or the poor schools, the poor families, I usually maybe make a computer, give one to the poor families so that they can grow knowing the computer.”

For e-waste recyclers across South Africa, there’s no escaping e-waste. But they firmly believe where there’s trash, there’s also treasure. Schröder ends the show with a sentiment of hope for the future, “People, planet, culture. That’s how it works. If we look after people, they can look after the planet. If people look after the planet and they have the right attitude, they develop the right culture.”

This article is extracted from a recent episode of Marketplace Africa by CNN.

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Author: CNN.

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AmaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism: This is a South African non-profit organization that conducts investigative
journalism.