E-waste compliance remains low as enforcement begins
By Kris van der Bijl
FEWER than one in 10 electronics producers in South Africa are meeting their obligations under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations.
This is according to the E-Waste Recycling Authority (ERA), one of the Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs) registered to administer the scheme.
The sector has widely treated 2026 as the year a grace period closed, reading the gap between the 2021 deadline and visible enforcement as time to prepare. The ERA CEO Ashley du Plooy, however, disputes that any grace existed.
“ERA does not agree with the notion that there was a grace period,” he told CBN, noting that producers have been obliged to comply and report since the regulations took effect on 5 November 2021.
The slow movement against non-compliant firms, it says, reflects the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) gearing up rather than any concession. Late registration has been excused only where a producer gives an adequate reason.
The scale of the shortfall sits behind that position. ERA estimates there are between 3,000 and 6,000 producers of electrical and electronic equipment, lighting and batteries in the country.
About 350 have registered on the government’s SAWIC system, and ERA believes only around half of those are fully compliant through a PRO.
ERA itself accounts for a large share of the compliant group, with around 104 members.
The regulations now carry gazetted collection and recycling targets backed by penalties that range from fines to suspension of trading rights.
A funding gap that limits the e-waste system
Low compliance feeds directly into the capacity of the scheme. PROs such as ERA are funded by levies on registered producers.
Compliant producers paying those fees are reluctant to contribute more, while non-compliant producers contribute nothing, which du Plooy says constrains its spending on collection infrastructure, education and awareness, and limits the scale at which it can treat e-waste.
In effect, weak enforcement keeps compliance low, and low compliance keeps ERA too underfunded to widen the net.
Du Plooy adds that producers often cite a lack of visible enforcement action against non-compliant firms as a reason the rate remains low.
Telkom shows what e-waste management can look like
Among the larger producers in the frame is Telkom, registered with the DFFE and operating through the E-Waste Association of South Africa (eWASA) as its PRO.
In Financial Year 2025 the company recovered 8,276 tonnes of e-waste, up from 6,458 tonnes the previous year, driven, according to their media spokesman, by the decommissioning of legacy network equipment.
But these e-waste recovery initiatives run through internal Openserve and BCX initiatives that sit outside the formal EPR framework.
Telkom says it sets no separate internal recovery targets for them.
Performance against the gazetted EPR targets, it says, is monitored and reported through eWASA rather than by Telkom directly. The tonnage shows activity, but the compliance question is one the company shirks back to its PRO.
And when asked how it engages the businesses generating e-waste from its products (think the old office phones rolled out in most offices), including any marketing of its FY2025 Trade-In programme to those customers, the company pointed to partnerships with Original Equipment Manufacturers and said the detail was still being finalised.
Telkom at least reports volumes and channels its recovery through accredited partners, which places it ahead of the unregistered majority.
ERA’s wider concern is again the roughly nine in ten producers outside the scheme, whose e-waste enters no compliant stream at all.
