Lucille Charles, Chief Innovation Officer of eWASA, explains how the organisation supports South African producers in meeting Extended Producer Responsibility regulations while advancing circular economy goals. Founded in 2008, eWASA manages compliant waste systems across electronics, lighting, oils, batteries and paper and packaging. Its projects include take-back schemes, enterprise development, job creation and landfill diversion.
A major milestone is the launch of the eWASA Academy, designed to close skills and legislative gaps in the green economy. Charles highlights Africa’s youthful population, resource wealth and entrepreneurship potential as drivers for sustainable waste management, beneficiation and environmental stewardship across the African continent.
My name is Lucille Charles and I am the Chief Innovations Officer at the EPR Waste Association of South Africa, otherwise known as eWASA. We have been around for some time. We were founded and established in 2008 with the purpose of providing sustainable environmental waste management systems in South Africa.
We are a not for profit company under the ambit of Section 18 of the Extended Producer Responsibility Regulations, and we are registered for five of the six gazetted waste streams, namely electronic and electrical equipment, lighting, lubricants and oils, portable batteries and paper and packaging.
What we really do is assist our producer members in finding sustainable, compliant waste management systems to help them meet the EPR compliance regulations in terms of Section 18. We also work with recycler member waste handlers within this system or universe to bring circularity, recyclability and resource recovery closer together.
The EPR regulations are quite vast in terms of the obligations for both the producer and a producer responsibility organisation. We are involved in a myriad of initiatives which both speak to the compliance of our producers within the ambit of the regulations but also to the spirit of the circular economy and seeking circular solutions.
Some projects touch across take-back schemes for across all our five sectors, including paper and packaging, where we have take-back schemes for polystyrene and also the label industries. We also have take-back schemes in the automotive sector or automotive lighting waste, which is historically a problematic waste stream.
Additionally, we have programmes and initiatives that touch on enterprise development, promoting new waste premiers, as we like to call it, job creation as well as increasing diversion tonnages of these materials away from landfill.
An initiative that we are quite excited to share with all of you is the launch of the eWASA Academy which we recently launched. The eWASA Academy provides an environment and a programme that speaks to closing the gap as far as environmental legislation is concerned, training and skills that are required in the green economy.
I would say Africa is at the sweet spot, seeing that we have the fastest growing young population in the world as well as one of the fastest economies globally as well. So this presents an interesting case for the continent as well as for South Africa. In an emerging economy, by strengthening sustainable waste management and resource recovery, Africa really has the opportunity to reinforce its commitment in environmental practices, which then shifts a paradigm as far as the global practices and partners prioritising safer and more sustainable waste management practices.
So Africa really has the opportunity to be at the forefront of this paradigm shift and also allowing for opportunities within the green economy to add to the broader economic framework of the continent.
The EPR space is quite exciting in the sense that we work with multiple stakeholders and of course this presents many challenges, but in the same breath, it also provides many opportunities for us.
I think one of the greatest challenges is because this is a grudge spend where our producers have to pay EPR fees, seemingly being taxed for their products, we do tend to get a lot of pushback from the sector as far as the fees are concerned. However, if we can shift then the focus from it being a grudge spend and corporates really having some acceptance of the waste management as an economic imperative, then we unlock a myriad of opportunities.
Consumer awareness is well, we have to bring our consumers along with us and by empowering and educating our producers, we will then drive producer thinking from the ground up.
Of course, in the African content, we always then hear about infrastructure as one of the barriers as far as some of our economic sectors are concerned. So through infrastructure identification, this will allow us to create an ecosystem that will enable the local beneficiation and also tertiary industries that arise from the green economy.
Being resource rich, we should develop local beneficiation of waste streams and marry this into our natural richness of resources. If we’re able to do this and bring these worlds together, South Africa is in the perfect position and has an enabling environment which will see us unlocking greater opportunities both from a socio economic perspective as well as in environmental stewardship.
At eWASA, we have a strong focus on entrepreneurs as well as emerging youth within the green economy. And I think this is important as Africa as a continent has the youngest population globally.
So it is important to create enabling spaces and entry points for market access for small and medium-sized enterprises that will essentially lead to transformative measures and transformation within the green economy sector. So it’s quite vital that from an entrepreneurial perspective, we promote spaces and encourage participation within the value chain, specifically within the green economy and particularly within the waste sector.
Our message is simple. Our message is embracing the EPR regulations because this provides an opportunity and an economic incentive to grow Africa’s potential as far as beneficiation is concerned, unlocking new markets through research and development and promoting and really being the front runner in environmental stewardship.
Africa has so much to offer except for being what is perceived to be a soft market globally for waste. however, by changing that narrative, Africa and South Africa can pioneer a new dawn for waste management stewardship, as well as recovery and beneficiation of materials that then speak to the green economy as well as the broader economic framework within the continent. And that is our message for the summit.
I think what’s exciting about this opportunity is the diverse stakeholder engagement, the variety of industries, partners, all of these role players within the waste management space, particularly those with a keen interest in the circular economy and the green economy. It just makes sense for us to be a part of such an event whereby we will interact, learn, cross-pollinate as far as knowledge sharing is concerned and can really drive impactful dialogue towards the green economy and the waste sector.
Of course, we wouldn’t want to be left behind. And so, this summit provides the perfect opportunity and conditions for us to interact and engage with our stakeholders.
Africa's Green Economy Summit connects industry professionals and organisations to information and each other in a carefully curated live environment. Its purpose is to support in mobilising investments for green projects to scale up and industrialisation, which will have a significant impact on environmental sustainability and economic growth.
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