Dr Pieter van Heyningen, CEO of KULU Eco-Services, describes the company’s mission to transform liquid and organic waste into valuable feedstocks for biofuels and biogas, offering a sustainable alternative to landfills. Operating in South Africa and partnering in Africa, including Nigeria, Kulu addresses growing waste challenges while earning carbon credits for every ton of waste processed and sharing this value with waste generators.
Central to its model is a new digital app that functions as an integrated waste resource management platform, connecting waste generators, transporters, and solution providers. The app digitizes services, increases transparency, supports rapid sustainability transitions, and helps formalise informal waste economies. By combining technology, engineering, and data, KULU rewards responsible behaviour, reduces landfill dependency, and positions waste as a resource. Van Heyningen emphasises collaboration, policy reform, and innovation as key drivers for job creation, transport decarbonisation, and growth within Africa’s circular green economy.
Background on KULU Eco-Services
Pieter van Heyningen: I’m the CEO of Kulu Eco-Services Pty. Ltd. We’re a company focused on waste, water, and energy. We have a locally grown, pioneering technology that deals with both waste resource management and the disruption of waste management in the Western Cape. Our primary focus has been on liquid and organic wastes, due to the legislative bans. Since 2019, there has been a complete ban on liquid waste to landfill, and an incremental 100% ban on organic wastes to landfill by 2027 in the Western Cape. We’re here to solve that challenge and provide innovative solutions to the market.
We’re involved in projects across the continent. We recently engaged in Nigeria to partner with organizations to start exporting difficult-to-treat liquid and organic wastes, which we transform into feedstocks for biofuels and biogas. Locally in Cape Town, we use our technology to transform these organic waste streams into feedstocks for biofuels and biogas.
We are in the process of finalizing our project for earning carbon credits. Which means we can pass on these credits to our partners. We believe in shared value, so we share a portion of these carbon credits with the waste generators and conventional waste transporters – who use our app.
In 2025, we did a lot of work on developing a robust system for transitions in companies. Sustainability isn’t just about the transformation process; it’s about the speed at which you can transform to achieve a better bottom line, as well as being an ecologically friendly company with social impact.
We’ve developed an app to help promote rapid transitions for sustainability. We also have a technology and engineering side to our business, which is about receiving various waste streams and converting them into feedstocks for renewables. We are a viable alternative to landfills on a small scale but plan to expand nationally. Landfills are reaching their sell-by-date and there’s a reluctance by government to build new ones. We see waste as resources, as opposed to waste piling up.
Over 122 million tons of waste have been recorded on landfills annually in South Africa, and over a third of that is organic waste. Our company is positioned to capitalize on transforming that waste while developing a system of reward for the generators.
We’re excited to launch our app in February; we call it the “Uber” of waste management. It allows for transparency, on demand e-hailing waste management and collection services, the digitization of services, and ad hoc services. We’re especially interested in supporting the informal economy and helping small businesses grow by linking them to waste generators. We have three categories of clients:
Africa is a fast-growing continent with over a billion people. Where there are people, there is waste. Many informal systems in Africa can be formalized. We want to utilize our app to formalize these systems because if waste lands up in the right entrepreneurial hands, it can be transformed into value.
The collection of data—understanding where waste comes from—is going to be valuable in itself. We want to have a portal where people can do research because we believe it is possible to live in a world that doesn’t have waste at all (i.e. zero waste). It’s also about sustainable consumption and production, which is about behaviour change – but we need to start by tackling the problem head on first.
I’m an economist by training, and I think carbon credits are a mechanism to try and right the wrongs of market failures. There needs to be better coordination and marketing around carbon credits in South Africa to make them more accessible for green projects investment or startup purposes. We’re in the process of registering our new waste conversion hub as a carbon project through Verra.
Because we are replacing a dirty fuel with a clean fuel, we’re able to double our point system with carbon credits. We’re looking at integrating various carbon credit platforms with our app so it becomes a currency for businesses to earn additional value. We’ve also developed the Green Credits Advantage Programme, which looks at giving back value to waste generators and sub-contracted partners who help us collect the waste.
We’re very proud to sponsor this conference. We believe many jobs can be created should government, business, and academia have a targeted and co-ordinated approach. We’re hosting a side event focused on the bioenergy economy and how we can transform policy in South Africa for this sector.
We need to embrace the green economy. We can’t all do everything; we need to specialize and collaborate. We need to stop trying to compete with each other so much. South Africans need to be a little bit braver and step out into Africa to build partnerships. I think we can build an amazing network and leapfrog a lot of the market failures that have happened in First World countries.
We are looking forward to South Africa and Africa’s green growth – and excited to be a part of it.
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