With 59 million people in South Africa, there is enormous pressure to reduce the amount of packaging waste sent to our country’s landfills or which ends up as visible litter in the environment.

For this reason, DFFE will be implementing the new Section 18 Regulations to the Waste Act from 5 November 2021.

Watch the latest video on exactly how this will work.

Reducing the number of plastic PRO’s

In the previous voluntary EPR landscape, South Africa had seven individual Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs) who managed the EPR schemes for the various different packaging streams, namely PETCO, Polyco, the Polystyrene Association, Southern African Vinyls Association, The Glass Recycling Company, Fibre Circle and MetPac-SA.

Polyco and VinylLoop Merger

Under the new mandatory EPR, VinylLoop (SAVA’s EPR division set up to deal with PVC packaging waste) has amalgamated with Polyco from the 1st of September 2021.

This merger between Polyco and VinylLoop does not mean that SAVA will cease to exist. As the focus of the new legislation is on packaging waste (of which PVC forms less than 2%) SAVA will continue with its activities and focus on product stewardship, promoting the use of vinyl products and protecting the local markets – the majority of which are in long-term applications such as building, construction, medical applications, footwear and clothing etc.

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