The Circular Economy Resource Recovery Report reports and summarises the quantities of resources diverted from waste in SA through recycling, re-use or energy recovery over the 2021–22 financial year.
Read on for a quick snapshot of SA’s recycling performance, or see the latest report for more detail.
- An estimated 4.88 million tonnes of waste materials was generated, and 81.9% of this (3.99 million tonnes) was recovered for further use
- 92% of recovered materials were reprocessed locally in SA
- Since 2003, the recycling rate has improved by nearly 22%, and the resource recovery has increased from 2 million tonnes to nearly 4 million tonnes a year
- The waste management, resource recovery and recycling sector employs more than 3,000 full-time equivalent employees.
- In SA, the waste sector contributes $649 million to the state economy
- SA leads the nation with the best recycling rate
- SA’s diversion and recovery rate means 1.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases are not being released, the same as planting 2.26 million trees, or taking 303,000 cars off the road in one year
Figure 4: Resource recovery, including energy recovery, SA, 2021–22, by material, source stream and destination, not including e-waste or material reused
