How Extended Producer Responsibility legislation in SA is shaping waste management reform

If you’ve ever tried peeling cling wrap off a polystyrene tray, you’ve felt the maddening inefficiency of our waste system. Now imagine doing that — but with a bra. 

South Africans produce about 122 million tons of waste each year, of which only 10% is recycled. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is meant to shrink this figure. 

The premise is simple: if you make it, you’re responsible for what happens when it’s no longer useful. 

Since 2020, EPR has been law in South Africa, starting with packaging, electronics, and lighting. Producers have to fund the collection and recycling of their products, nudging them toward smarter design and less waste.

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment hoped this would steer waste away from landfills and push the economy toward something more circular. 

The clothing and textile sector is one earmarked for localisation and sustainability — but with the potential of its largely unmanaged waste stream growing, it faces pressure to follow the packaging industry’s lead on environmentally friendly principles. 

A case of too many cooks 

Voluntary EPR once ran on the intent of sustainably minded companies. That spirit has since been somewhat… recycled, replaced by a rigid, confusing system. 

When EPR became law, the number of packaging Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs) increased from just a handful to about 40, according to Feroz Koor, group sustainability officer at Woolworths. 

These organisations handle the logistics. Producers pay PROs to manage waste on their behalf. But instead of working together, they are locked in a competition for market share. 

Read more: Corporate accountability for waste management under the spotlight

Junaid Francis, stakeholder manager at Petco, which is a PRO, said that by wanting to improve their value offering, a “race to the bottom” created by legislation had emerged between PROs. 

Another hurdle posed by EPR legislation lies in who qualifies as a “producer”. The Waste Act defines this word to include the full value chain of manufacturers, converters, refurbishers, importers and brand owners. 

“You cannot have the brand owner as a producer and the packaging manufacturer as a producer and the filler as a producer,” Koor said. 

This overly broad definition creates overlap, duplication and friction. 

“The regulations are too onerous and at times too prescriptive,” Francis said, explaining that there’s ambiguity in who exactly is responsible for what. 

 The cost of compliance 

EPR can become a burden for businesses. Francis highlighted that the government frequently makes changes to the EPR legislation, making it “tricky for PROs to plan in the long term, and in the short term having to adapt to changes that may come”. 

By law, PROs can only spend 12% of their revenue on admin, regardless of how ambitious their waste targets are. 

For companies like Woolworths, fragmentation drives up costs further. To stay compliant, Koor said, they had to join multiple PROs across different packaging types. 

Threading the needle 

South Africa’s clothing, textile, footwear, and leather industry might seem like a natural fit for EPR-style regulation, especially as textile waste mounts at an alarming pace. 

Cape Town alone landfilled more than 70,000 tons of textile waste in 2022, a GreenCape industry brief shows. 

Textile waste remains largely invisible in national policy. The data is patchy at best and not included in the 2017 State of Waste Report or the National Waste Management Strategy (NWMS). 

Read more: Extending recycling responsibility to producers can reduce the used-clothing waste stream

While the clothing, textile, footwear, and leather masterplan aims to boost competitiveness and jobs in this labour-intensive sector, its sustainability focus is still in its early stages. “If the National Waste Management Strategy’s highly ambitious targets are to be met, textile waste must be integrated into future updates,” the GreenCape brief reads. 

End of life interventions  

Unlike a chips packet, a T-shirt might get reworn, donated or turned into a dishcloth before it hits the bin. 

“EPR is an end-of-life intervention,” Koor said, and for textiles that endpoint is rarely clear-cut. Garments are complex to assemble and recycle. Zaheer Patel, a textile and sustainability specialist at Pick n Pay, points to bras as an example. It could contain metal, plastic, fabric and elastic. Those parts usually come from four or five different countries.

Read more: Five steps to make your fashion choices more sustainable

“Just trying to get cotton away from polyester is an incredibly complex thing,” Patel said. “Imagine what it would be if you had more than one component mixed up into one garment.” 

Filling the gap 

In the absence of textile-specific waste policy, some companies are forging ahead on their own. 

Connacher, a division of Feltex, runs a textile recycling plant in KwaZulu-Natal. 

“Until about three years ago we were recycling about 600 to 700 tons a month of textile waste,” said managing director Gary Erasmus. Their recycled materials end up in bedding, insulation and automotive products, to name a few. 

Read more: South African start-up Faro is using AI to turn fashion’s waste into affordable luxury

Globally, innovation is targeting one of the industry’s worst offenders: blended fabrics. US-based company Circ has developed tech to separate and recycle cotton-polyester blends, a major share of what gets discarded.

“Most people do not know what their clothes are made from,” said Circ’s chief business officer, Luke Henning. “If you look at the three predominant fibre types that make up all textile fabric, it is by far oil, followed by cotton, followed by trees.” 

Henning explained that when cotton runs low, lyocell — made from wood pulp — fills the gap.

“Currently, about 25% of that still comes from old growth forests. So you’re literally ripping apart the earth’s lungs to make clothes.” 

Getting people to buy less is a “pretty hard sell”, according to Henning, because that’s how we brand ourselves. 

“Until we can convince people that part of that branding has to be showing your sustainability credentials, you’re not going to get a major change.” 

EPR has pushed companies to rethink packaging, but at the cost of clarity and coordination. The textile sector has a chance to learn before it leaps when it comes to waste management policies. DM