1. What is the current state of the South African plastics recycling industry?
I think the South African plastic recycling industry is struggling, in much the same way that the rest of the world is struggling, because of the volatility of virgin plastics prices, and the fact that you can easily substitute recycled plastics with virgin material. Another threat is that changes in the cost of recyclates between countries can sometimes make it competitive to import recycled plastics as opposed to locally recycling your own plastics. The risk of both virgin plastics and imported recyclates being cheaper is that you don't recycle locally and you then have more local waste. So there are some threats. However, we have a thriving recycling economy in South Africa. We have more than 300 recycling companies and we have very high recycling rates. I would say that for a lot of our materials, we compete with developed countries in terms of recycling rates. So it's a very well established industry. There's quite a lot of flux happening in the industry at the moment, there's a lot of changes. We've had to adapt to quite a lot of new challenges, such as our energy crisis. At the moment, we also have a labour issue going on, which pushes up the price but also reduces the confidence for investors. Those kinds of challenges lead to a little bit of a downturn in the market. The industry itself is under pressure, both from a price perspective and from an operational perspective.
As far as we can tell, the situation is currently at its worst. A lot of companies have shut down in the last six to eight months, probably more than before. Maybe we had a delayed effect due to our long recycling history –something we are very proud of. We have a lot of very experienced and passionate recyclers, which maybe builds a bit of resilience into the industry. A lot of those players were able to adapt when they were first faced with these shocks. They have often diversified into other businesses, like taking over production of products, not just recycled pellets, for example. At the moment, I think what's happening is that they're running out of options. Because normally when you have a really difficult time, it doesn't last for very long, and then you would have some kind of relief. At the moment, we are seeing a bit of a turnaround: interest rates are going to drop again, and so maybe the economy is going to see increase in demand for consumer goods. But I think this shock has been just a little bit too long for some recyclers.
A lot of the companies that were not able to push through were ones that had not invested in new machinery or technology. Having an outdated operating system puts them at risk because they're trying to produce products which they sell at competing prices, but their costs have not reduced. The problem with that is like a snowball effect: when a company is in a state of shock, they don't reinvest. They don't have the spare capacity or capital to do that. They just try to tighten up where they can, cut some corners, or buy cheaper raw materials. They don’t invest in machinery or in a whole new wash plant or filtration system. But then by doing that, they are exposing themselves for the future.
2. What shape do technology developments need to take in South Africa, considering the instability of its power grid?
There are no silver bullets. I think South Africa is moving towards energy independence. Maybe in the future we will have independent power sources, with private companies supplying electricity to private recycling companies and not involving the government supply system. That's simply because the government has failed. They've opened this opportunity for the private sector fill. The timeline is for that is probably medium term, although we're starting to see some innovations coming in, but it's still very difficult to beat government supply on price. Most industry is still using government electricity because it's the cheapest. That comes with a whole bunch of reliability and stability issues, and there are quite a few solutions around that. So instead of having load shedding, they're having load curtailment, they're just reducing their demand.
But whichever way you look at it, the energy system really does frustrate and hurt the recycling companies. This opens up an opportunity, then, for the technology suppliers to come in not only with energy efficient machinery, but also with machinery that heats up quickly. That may sound counter-intuitive to energy efficiency, but sometimes you can create an efficient machine that can also heat up very quickly to make up for that lost time. There are also opportunities for things like storage of energy to supply during the load shedding times.
3. What do you think are the main innovations which will improve plastics recycling?
I would say that design for recycling is a trend that is going to have a massively positive impact, that is going to increase the viability of recycling massively. There are also a lot of really cool technologies that are emerging in packaging production. One of them is material direction orientation (MDO), where you use the same polymer, but you lay it over itself in multiple directions. That could replace a multi material, multi-layer material. That is basically a subset of design for recycling. Another innovation in that category is inks and adhesives. Inks that wash off easily, and adhesives that release in water and stick to the labels. Those kinds of innovations are moving really fast. I think those are the ones to look out for that are very exciting.
As for innovations which will increase demand for recycled plastics, there's a lot of new product development happening where people are coming up with all kinds of new products that can use recycled plastics. And in many cases, it's not necessarily that the product is new, but it's just that the application of recycled materials is new. To that effect, there's also multi-layer injection moulding, which is basically having virgin plastics on the outside, but then you can fill it on the in the middle with recycled polymer.
4. What do you think are the opportunities and challenges for broader collaboration within all African nations for plastics recycling?
I think there is a need for regional collaboration. A lot of companies or countries don't have enough scale or big enough markets to make it viable to invest, in which case it makes a lot of sense to export your materials for recycling. There's a lot of hurdles to overcome when it comes to international trade and waste, but I think that it's something that needs to be looked at. Especially in the case of manufacturing companies with very large manufacturing bases which produce in one developed, industrialised country, and then sell their products off to undeveloped or developing countries. There needs to be an effort to retrieve those materials. You can't just leave the trash where you sold it – or you can, but you shouldn't.
I believe quite strongly that by collaborating regionally, you can reach those economies of scale, and you can invest when you pull together all those materials. We do quite a lot of international trade with our direct neighbours, so SADC countries (Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). We import quite a lot of materials, and we export recyclates.
5. If you had to pick one sustainability trend that will drop off the agenda by 2030, what would it be?
I'm tempted to say something like waste to energy, but maybe that's just hopefulness, not fact. I think chemical recycling is not going to go completely extinct, but I think it's possibly going to become just unviable, especially for developing countries. There will always be a small place for it, for example for very high value applications. If you want a crystal clear, 100% recycled content for your designer perfume bottle, say. So there will probably be that. But in terms of scale, I don't see chemical recycling scaling up the way that people are saying it will or hope it will. I hope I'm wrong.