Hon Chair, the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs has embarked on a law reform process that seeks to make certain amendments and improvements to the National Environmental Management: Waste Act, in order to improve and enhance implementation, as well as to streamline some regulatory approaches for acceleration of economic growth and for promoting a waste recycling economy.
On 4 May 2012, South Africa made final the Waste Management Strategy, which is now under implementation. The strategy is based on principles that promote dealing with the waste hierarchy, namely reduce, reuse, recycle and recover.
Having reconsidered this strategy and the current policy and regulatory framework, we acknowledge that they do not quite actively or adequately promote the waste management hierarchy. They have limited the economic potential of the waste management sector, which has an estimated turnover of approximately R50 billion per annum.
Both waste collection and the recycling industry currently make meaningful contributions to job creation and the gross domestic product, GDP, which can be accelerated and scaled up. We do therefore think that it is important to make these amendments, and this then is why this Bill has come about.
The main drivers of waste generation are essentially expanding economies, increased goods production and an increase in population and production. This illustrates the message that resonated in this House last week and also throughout this week that South Africa's economy has been growing since 1994. Indeed, this is a good story to tell.
Despite South Africa's positive economic trajectory, unemployment remains rife amongst skilled and unskilled workers. Given the nature of the waste sector, there are significant potential opportunities that need to be unlocked and unblocked in order for this sector to effectively contribute to job creation.
Increasing quantities of waste, poor waste management and lack of access to waste services lead to pollution and associated health impacts and environmental degradation. This is coupled with the fact that levels of recycling and reuse are relatively low, and waste is not necessarily seen or considered as a resource with socioeconomic potential.
To address these challenges in this area, the National Development Plan has identified the implementation of the waste management hierarchy, which is reduce, reuse, recycle and recover, as a means to exploit job creation and economic production in this sector.
This requires product stewardship, producer responsibility and rapid expansion of infrastructure, in particular. This is what the changes in this Bill actually intend to address.
Chairperson, you will know that some of our people who depend on the informal economy have been living on waste dumps in order to sustain a livelihood. They are commonly known as waste pickers. For some of them, this is all they know and have practised since childhood.
They are still picking waste and they will probably also pass this practice on to their children as well. This problem is perpetuated, amongst other things, by thousands of waste pickers who do this for their families every day.
After 20 years of our democracy, the time has come for a transformation of the waste sector in order to offer our people a more dignified living by drawing them into the mainstream economy, as well as formalising the waste- recycling sector as a viable and decent way to accelerate job creation in this sector for tens of thousands of South Africans.
In this context, Chairperson, in this Bill we have agreed on the amendment of the National Environmental Management: Waste Act and we recommend to this august House that this includes rationalising certain definitions and concepts to provide regulatory clarity and certainty, as well as creating an innovative institutional mechanism to supplement capacity in the waste sector.
Firstly, we feel that there is a need to create more policy and regulatory certainty.
Secondly, by augmenting the institutional capacity and clearly defining the roles and responsibilities amongst us as spheres of government, we can uncap and unleash the R50 billion worth of potential that is in this industry.
Consequently, this will be the catalyst for investment in large-scale recycling infrastructure to enable waste separation, waste diversion, recycling and recovery.
It is because of this approach that we have expanded certain terminologies and definitions, such as recovery, reuse and waste, to embrace the broader context and to create the enabling regulatory environment and institutional mechanisms to facilitate and promote the recycling economy.
With the two minutes that are left to me, I would like to indicate that we are indeed dealing with this because of the need for us to create jobs.
We have been implementing some of the programmes practically throughout South Africa, and we are certain that these changes will actually help us to create jobs. Thank you very much. [Time expired.] [Applause.]