As South Africa welcomes spring and marks National Recycling Day on 15 September, the Institute of Waste Management of Southern Africa (IWMSA) is issuing a challenge for the country to rethink what it calls “waste”.

Because across Africa, what we throw away is increasingly being turned into what we build with, travel on and earn from.

In Rwanda, recycled plastic has been transformed into bricks used to build a house – and even a road. At the Mageragere Recycling Initiative facility in Kigali, single-use plastic waste collected from communities, businesses and institutions is processed into pavers, with the resulting road demonstrating how discarded plastic can become a durable construction material. The same initiative has produced Rwanda’s first house constructed entirely from recycled plastic bricks.

In Ghana, entrepreneur Nelson Boateng has spent years turning plastic waste into paving tiles, building blocks and houses. His company, Nelplast Ghana, uses recovered plastic mixed with sand to manufacture construction products, with waste pickers feeding recovered material into the process.

And this isn’t simply a story about clever recycling technology. It is about jobs and livelihoods.

In Kenya, waste management company TakaTaka Solutions has diverted thousands of tonnes of plastic waste into managed recovery and recycling streams, while working with communities and organisations to improve source separation, collection, and economic opportunities.

South Africa, meanwhile, has already demonstrated that we don’t need to look overseas for innovation. In 2019, a 300-metre section of road in Jeffreys Bay became Africa’s first eco-friendly road incorporating recycled plastic, using approximately 700kg of waste plastic in the road surface. A separate trial in KwaZulu-Natal saw recycled plastic incorporated into asphalt.

“These examples challenge the idea that recycling is simply about putting the right item into the right bin,” says Mervin Olivier, former chairperson of the Eastern Cape branch of the IWMSA.

“Recycling is about keeping valuable materials in circulation, creating economic opportunities and finding innovative ways to solve some of the environmental and social challenges facing our communities.”

A prime example of this is Lilly Loompa, led by Lizl Naude in Paarl, is a wonderful example of the transformation of waste materials into eco-friendly furniture and homeware products. Its central message is that waste can be converted into something that is useful, creative and a desirable artistic piece.

But innovation alone will not create a circular economy. People are the critical link.

South Africa’s waste reclaimers play an essential role in recovering recyclable materials from the waste stream. Increasing recognition and integration of reclaimers into formal waste management systems is an important step towards a more inclusive recycling economy.

That is why the IWMSA is calling on households, businesses, municipalities and organisations throughout the waste value chain to make source separation a priority this spring.

For households, it can be as simple as keeping recyclable materials separate from general waste and finding out how recycling is collected locally.

For businesses and local municipalities, it means creating systems that make separation, collection and recovery easier.

And for all of us, it means seeing the waste reclaimer pushing a trolley down the street differently. They aren’t collecting rubbish. They are recovering resources.

This National Recycling Day, the IWMSA’s message is simple: Don’t just recycle. Rethink what waste can become.

Let’s give our waste – and our planet – a second chance.