South African businesses could be operating under a new national waste rulebook from 2027. The Draft National Waste Management Strategy (NWMS) 2026 targets 40% of waste diverted from landfill within five years, 50% within ten and at least 60% within fifteen. It proposes designing a landfill tax, directing landfills to host material recovery facilities and exploring a legislated ban on organic waste to landfill. Each measure moves responsibility, and cost, closer to where waste is generated. For commercial and industrial generators, that makes on-site waste management a lever on cost, compliance risk, resource recovery and ESG performance.

“For an FMCG plant, a manufacturer, a hotel or a distribution centre, the value of what leaves the site is decided on the site. Clean, separated waste streams find markets. Mixed waste streams default to landfill disposal.” says Dirk de Wet, Chief Operating Officer at Oricol Environmental Services. “This is why we put trained people on the floor who know each stream. Landfill airspace is a strategic national asset, and it should be kept for waste that genuinely has no secondary resource value and nowhere else to go.”

Matching streams to national priorities

The draft NWMS sets 2030 targets for materials commercial and industrial (C&I) sites generate in volume: 70% of paper recycled, 60% of plastic, 90% of glass and metals, a 30% cut in food waste and 70% of construction and demolition waste diverted. Organics, which make up more than half of general waste disposed, are the largest opportunity. Oricol routes segregated organics to composting, animal feed and anaerobic digestion, including through its established Cape Town Biogas partnership.

Knowing where every tonne goes

For a manufacturer, retailer or hotel group, diverting waste is only half the job. The other half is proving it. Auditors, investors and customers increasingly want to know where a company’s waste went, by tonne and by stream, and national data will not answer that for them. The draft strategy notes that only about 30% of waste operators required to report to the national waste information system actually do so. The pressure on businesses is building from several directions. The Waste Act already places a duty of care on any business holding waste. The revised ISO 14001 environmental standard, published in April, asks certified companies to keep closer control of outsourced activities, including waste handling. South Africa is also moving towards formal sustainability disclosure standards, which raise the bar for the evidence behind ESG claims.

Oricol is ISO 9001 accredited, and the sites it manages fall within its ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 audit programme.

“A sustainability report is only as credible as the paperwork behind it,” says de Wet. “When an auditor or investor asks where a tonne of waste went, a business needs a documented answer for every site and every stream. With an accredited partner working on site, that record starts the moment waste is generated, not when the truck leaves the gate.”

Staying ahead of the enforcement curve

Segregated waste streams can hold use potential and can become secondary raw materials, compost, animal feed, biogas or refuse derived fuel. Each of those pathways depends on decisions made on site, and each takes time to build into contracts, operations and reporting.

Deeply embedded in the new National Waste Management Strategy is a significant step up in monitoring and enforcement, with more Environmental Management Inspectors and tighter compliance targets for waste facilities. Businesses that wait for the final strategy will be setting up diversion pathways under scrutiny. Those that start now can set up their processing and diversion capacity before  the new wave of enforcement arrives.