South Africa’s recycling system is often framed as a technical or behavioural challenge: households don’t separate waste, municipalities lack capacity and recycling rates remain stubbornly low. But this diagnosis misses the real issue. The country’s recycling crisis is not primarily a waste problem but a governance failure.
Despite ambitious circular economy strategies, extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations and sustainability commitments, South Africa continues to rely heavily on landfilling. At the same time, an informal workforce of waste pickers recovers the majority of post-consumer recyclables, operating outside formal systems that neither recognise nor support their contribution. This contradiction is not accidental; it is the outcome of fragmented governance, institutional inertia and policy design disconnected from operational realities.
At the municipal level, waste management responsibilities are split across departments with overlapping mandates but limited co-ordination. National policy promotes circularity, yet local implementation remains inconsistent and under-resourced. EPR schemes introduce private sector funding and targets, but often operate in parallel to, rather than integrated with, municipal and informal systems. The result is a patchwork of initiatives that look progressive on paper but fail to deliver systemic change on the ground.
Informal waste pickers sit at the centre of this governance gap. In cities like Johannesburg they recover 60%-90% of recyclable materials, providing a critical service to municipalities and industry at virtually no public cost. Yet they remain excluded from decision-making, denied access to infrastructure, and exposed to economic and physical vulnerability.
Their marginalisation is not just a social justice issue; it undermines the efficiency and resilience of the entire recycling value chain. This exclusion reflects a deeper institutional bias. South Africa’s waste governance model continues to privilege formal, centralised systems, even when evidence shows that decentralised, informal networks outperform them in material recovery.
Rather than adapting policy to reflect how the system actually functions, governance frameworks attempt to retrofit informality into rigid bureaucratic structures, often through pilot projects that never scale.
South Africa’s circular economy ambitions will not be realised through strategy documents alone. They will be achieved, or fail, in the everyday governance of waste: who is included, who is paid, who decides and who benefits.
International experience offers a different lesson. In cities across Latin America, Asia and parts of Europe, waste picker integration has succeeded where governance reform preceded infrastructure investment. Co-operative models, co-governance agreements, guaranteed access to recyclables and stable payment mechanisms have delivered higher recovery rates, better livelihoods and lower system costs. Crucially, these outcomes were driven not by technology alone, but by institutional redesign.
South Africa now stands at a similar crossroad. Digital tools such as traceability platforms, digital identification and mobile payments are frequently promoted as solutions to recycling inefficiencies. While these tools have potential, deploying them without governance reform risks reinforcing exclusion rather than resolving it. Technology cannot compensate for fragmented authority, unclear roles or the absence of inclusive policy design.
What is required instead is a shift toward hybrid governance: systems that formally recognise informal actors, align municipal and EPR objectives, and embed accountability across the value chain. This means moving beyond symbolic recognition of waste pickers toward structural inclusion, including:
- representation in policy forums;
- access to sorting infrastructure;
- transparent pricing mechanisms; and
- data systems that make their contribution visible and bankable.
For business, the implications are significant. Recycling firms, producers and brand owners depend on stable material flows to meet EPR targets and sustainability commitments. Ignoring the informal backbone of the system introduces supply risk, reputational exposure and long-term cost inefficiencies. Conversely, investing in inclusive governance models can unlock more reliable recovery, better data and shared value creation.
South Africa’s circular economy ambitions will not be realised through strategy documents alone. They will be achieved, or fail, in the everyday governance of waste: who is included, who is paid, who decides and who benefits. Until these questions are addressed directly, recycling will remain a system that works despite policy, rather than because of it.
The path forward is clear. What remains uncertain is whether South Africa is prepared to reform the institutions that govern waste, or whether it will continue to treat a governance failure as a technical inconvenience.
• Fuma is a circular economy researcher and practitioner focused on integrating informal waste pickers into South Africa’s formal recycling economy.
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