The South African REDISA model for tyre recycling is not quite ready to vanish into the thin air
Tyre and Rubber Recycling visited non-profit REDISA in Capetown when it looked like they had got to grips with handling South Africa’s tyre waste challenges.
The system they envisaged involved collector on the street picking up tyres and being paid for doing so when they delivered them to collection centres. The benefits were proposed that each collector would have a bank account, something that was rare amongst that level in society. They would be paid per tyre collected and they could access the accumulated funds from that account.
Tyres would then be taken to collection centres, and from there to a number of proposed processing centres.
That, in a nutshell was how it was supposed to work. However, the tyre industry wasn’t happy that they did not have control, as they do in most EPR operations, there were protests from various vested interests, and ultimately, REDISA was subject to litigation from the then environment minister, Edna Molewa withdrew the non-profit scheme, illegally according to Stacey Jansen, a REDISA director.
Without going ionto the details of the case, it is reasonable to say that non-profit does not mean that people do not make money, and that perhaps was at the heart of Molewa’s withdrawal of the scheme.
Eight years down the line from the withdrawal, and a long series of court cases, Stacey Jansen wrote in South Africa’s Business Day, that the REDISA team had high hopes for a fresh start. However Jansen believes that the new environment minister Dion George, has wasted a chance to pick a low hanging fruit.
Jansen writes; “Economic research has shown that monetising the 38 different waste streams in SA through recycling, could add 1.75% to our economic growth rate. This growth would be underpinned by small and medium enterprises, which have most potential to create employment. When recycling is done correctly it also opens up markets for new products.
“In fact, SA was a world leader in formalising the waste tyre stream just seven years ago.”
The Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of SA (Redisa) had high hopes for a fresh start under a new minister, but his inexplicable inaction so far on the waste front, specifically waste tyres, has been disappointing.
George and his department have simply ignored the waste tyre crisis. SA discards between 253,000 and 259,000 tonnes of waste tyres every year, according to Jansen. This enormous volume poses a serious environmental threat. In the informal economy hundreds of waste tyres are burnt every day to access scrap metal, causing extreme air pollution, and most of the rest end up in dumps or languish in enormous and growing used tyre depots.
Many industry players have warned that SA’s waste tyre depots are over capacity and in breach of fire regulations, posing a serious fire risk. Last year a devastating fire broke out at the Biesiesvlei Waste Tyre Storage Depot in Lichtenburg, with severe environmental and financial repercussions. The other over-capacity depots are ticking time bombs.
This dire state of affairs could have been avoided. In fact, SA was a world leader in formalising the waste tyre stream just seven years ago. Between 2012 and 2017, REDISA, a nonprofit company, pioneered a plan alongside the government that built 22 tyre collection centres, employed more than 3,000 people, created 226 SMMEs and offset 59,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year. It accelerated the recycling economy, empowered unskilled workers and stimulated entrepreneurship.
Instead of resurrecting a similar model to the REDISA one, and righting a manifest wrong, George chose last year to rather support the previous incumbent’s fatally flawed Industry Waste Tyre Management Plan. He is doing so seemingly on the advice and counsel of the self-same officials who presided over the current disastrous state of affairs.
Jansen continues; “This latest plan claims to be a way of addressing the waste tyre problem, but it sets unachievable targets, contains numerous inconsistencies, lacks any budgetary detail and was created and approved in an improper manner. It is the type of irresponsible plan-making that has come to define ANC inefficiency. And with George’s support it will soon define DA inefficiency too.
Should this plan be implemented, it would be a disaster. Waste and recycling entrepreneurs would suffer further. After trying for months, with no success, to communicate in good faith with the department and George, REDISA had no choice but to approach the courts to stop the plan.”
“SA needs bold, decisive action on waste management in 2025. It is time for George to act,” says Jansen.
A full version of this story can be found in Business Day
