Recycling diverts waste from landfill and reduces reliance on virgin materials, but it is only as useful as its downstream impact. For recycling to be effective, it has to create demand for a secondary-goods market as well as ensure that materials made from recycled goods are also recyclable.

For Steffen Schröder, managing director of Reclite SA, a recycling company, this is where “true sustainability” in recycling begins. Schröder adds, “This starts with a simple principle: recycling must be about resource recovery, not simply moving waste away from landfill.”

His focus on “true sustainability” is based on an observation: “The rules of the game that we’re playing are not really equal. Not everybody plays by the same rules.”

Rather than pointing fingers, he believes the industry needs to establish a clearer understanding of what sustainable recycling actually looks like. For him, that means balancing the three Ps: people, planet and profit, while also considering safety and sound environmental management.

“Driving recycling as a process for resource recovery for manufacturing of new products that again add value to the economy” is the starting point, he says. But this creates a further challenge: the products made from recovered resources must themselves be designed for recovery and recycling.

One of the biggest differences between conventional recycling metrics and Schröder’s approach is what happens after material leaves the recycler. He describes a “two-level down transparent system”, where recyclers monitor not only their immediate downstream customer, but where the recovered resource ultimately ends up.

“If the aluminium that we recover gets sold to a smelter, then we find out what products the smelter makes out of that, and then we also qualify the environmental performance of our downstream partner,” he explains.

This matters because simply transferring 100% of a material to another company does not necessarily mean 100% has been sustainably recycled. Downstream processing can generate its own waste and environmental impacts. “If we supply a dirty material, and there’s a lot of waste on our downstream vendor, that has an impact on the way that we see our recycling capability of that product.”

For Schröder, greater transparency can also help recyclers work with customers to improve material quality and overall recovery efficiency.

The problem with only recycling the valuable fractions

Contamination, infrastructure, markets and economics all create challenges for recycling, but Schröder identifies a more fundamental problem: the tendency to focus on the easiest and most valuable materials.

“I believe the biggest hurdle is that it’s easier to recover only the high-value fractions without investing into the entire product or waste chain.”

Developing solutions for difficult materials requires time, experimentation and investment. The immediate financial return may not justify that investment, particularly when simpler materials can generate better margins.

Yet if recyclers only pursue high-value fractions, difficult materials remain unresolved. Schröder points to plastics, fibre-optic cables and brominated flame-retardant-containing materials as examples.

Developing viable recovery processes can take years, and sometimes requires accepting losses while a market develops.

“We treat waste streams where we don’t make a single cent, maybe even a loss,” he says. “But if we don’t do it, no one else does it.” This does not mean recycling businesses should ignore profitability. Rather, the industry needs to recognise that developing new recycling streams can require long-term investment before they become commercially viable. Reclite SA offer a good example, where fluorescent bulbs were seen a “negative income” stream, Reclite SA continued to recycle the material while developing a use for it on the market, and now it is a core element of their business.

Recycling has to compete with extraction

The environmental sustainability of recycling is also questioned because recycling itself requires energy, transport, water and infrastructure. Schröder argues that the better question is where the break-even point lies compared with virgin resource extraction.

Mining benefits from concentrated resources. Recycling has the opposite problem: valuable materials are dispersed across households, businesses and communities and must be collected before they can be processed.

“A mine has a relatively small footprint when compared to an entire country,” he says. The answer, therefore, cannot be for individual recyclers to solve the logistics problem alone. Collection, transport, infrastructure and recycling need to operate as a connected system.

“Recycling is possible, but not in isolation,” says Schröder. “It’s a multi-stakeholder approach driving logistics and collection sustainably forward.” This is one area where Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Producer responsibility Organisations (PROs) can play an important role by creating the infrastructure needed to bring dispersed waste streams into the recycling value chain.

Without an end market, is it really recycling?

For Schröder, the end market is fundamental: “Recycling for the sake of recycling alone can never achieve true sustainability.”

Recovered material needs to become a useful input into another manufacturing process. Otherwise, recycling risks becoming an expensive form of waste management rather than genuine resource recovery. He adds, “The objective is to move waste from being a liability towards being a resource with economic value. At the end of the day, we’re doing it for the consumer; the consumer is the one that ends up with a new product as well.”

This also means product manufacturers need to take greater responsibility for what happens at end of life. Schröder sees EPR and PROs as potential links between recyclers and manufacturers, enabling information about end-of-life challenges to influence future product design.

“If you’re a really good recycler, you’re a producer,” he says.

In this sense, recycling can become a manufacturing activity in its own right, rather than a waste management service.

Recycling’s overlooked workforce

True sustainability also has a social dimension, particularly in South Africa’s recycling system.

Schröder questions whether describing reclaimers and dismantlers as the “informal sector” accurately reflects the businesses many of them operate. “They have premises. They pay rent. They have people. They have weighing scales. They pay money to people dropping off items. They get paid for what they recover. What’s informal about that?”

Whatever terminology is used, he argues that these actors need to be recognised as part of the recycling value chain. “The collection system is right there. We only have limited access; they have unlimited access.”

This is particularly important in developing countries and communities where formal collection systems are limited. Integrating reclaimers and dismantlers into broader recycling systems could increase diversion from landfill while creating meaningful income-generation opportunities.

Measuring recycling performance differently

Tonnes collected and recycled remain useful metrics, but Steffen believes they are not enough. “The current metrics are valid. However, more relevant metrics need to be added that can help drive better sustainability,” says Schröder.

One measure should be whether projects supported through EPR funding eventually become independent, value-adding operations. Another should examine whether collection infrastructure generates sufficient value over its lifetime to justify its cost.

Most importantly, the industry should track whether increasing volumes are making recycling more or less economically efficient.

“If we’re driving more volume, is it becoming more costly per tonne?” he asks. “Where is the system going long term?” For Schröder, an EPR system that continually becomes more expensive as volumes increase is a warning sign rather than a success.

Setting minimum standards

Schröder believes South Africa needs stronger standards for licensed recyclers. His proposal is to make environmental performance audits mandatory as part of external licence reviews and establish minimum recycling standards for specific products and waste streams.

“Anyone not meeting these limits is no longer considered a recycler.”

Such standards would create a more level playing field and prevent companies that invest heavily in comprehensive recycling from competing against operators that only recover the easiest fractions.

“It would create a level playing field and drive better environmental performance,” he says.

However, Steffen distinguishes between licensed recyclers and reclaimers or dismantlers. The latter should not face more regulation. “The reclaimer and dismantler market, they don’t need a stick; they need a carrot.” For licensed recyclers, however, he believes higher standards should be welcomed, “If we’re saying we do, well, audit me against it. Let me live and fall by it.”

For Steffen, that is ultimately what true sustainability in recycling requires: clear standards, transparent downstream recovery, viable end markets, better product design and a value chain that delivers environmental, economic and social value. “You want recycling? You want diversion from landfill? Set the standard.”