Media Releases

Johannesburg, 19 August 2025: The Paper and Packaging PRO Alliance is pleased to announce the relaunch of the upgraded South African Waste Pickers Registration System (SAWPRS).

SAWPRS is the national Government-initiated waste picker registration database that is integral to ensuring that waste pickers and their informal collection systems are fully integrated into the country’s formal recycling value chain and to substantially expand the collection of recyclables.

“It has been a long and difficult journey to rectify the technical challenges that were encounteredwith the initial version of SAWPRS, which did not properly provide for the mammoth task of linkingthousands of buy back centre point-of-sale transactions to registered waste pickers and enablingthe associated service fee payments,” explains Bhavesh Patel, Executive Director of the PROAlliance.

“Multiple stakeholders have been involved in reaching this point and our gratitudeextends to all, but a special acknowledgement must go to our partner waste picker organisations– the African Reclaimers Organisation (ARO) and the South African Waste Pickers Association(SAWPA) – whose determination and perseverance helped drive the project forward.”

Improved collaboration between the various stakeholders, including the waste pickerorganisations, the PROs, Government, non-government and private entities, as well as expertinput, access to critical system components, and the focused attention of a dedicated task teamled by the PRO Alliance, have enabled the development of the new system in a very short spaceof time.

The focus in recent weeks has been on training the waste picker organisations, facilitatingSAWPRS registration drives across the country and rebuilding the credibility of SAWPRSnationally.

The PRO-Alliance-led BBC200 Project is a multi-stakeholder national initiative intended toaccelerate the integration of waste pickers into South Africa’s formal waste economy. The projectuses the newly developed SAWPRS platform to ensure registration on the national database, andwith the assistance of a transactional platform and a cashless payment solution, will recordauditable transactions and enable payment of service fees.

From June 2025 to the end of 2026, the aim is to digitally onboard around 200 BBCs nationally,thus enabling the payment of the service fee to approximately 80 000 waste pickers through acashless, auditable payment system.

The first significant milestone, 50 BBCs onboarded by the end of 2025 and 20 000 waste pickers registered, will prove the success of the first phase of the project and will guarantee funding from the member Producer Responsibility Organisations (PROs) for the second phase.

Further, for the first time, PROs will have access to real-time reporting on materials, volumes, andpayments and will ease the administrative burden on the organisations through automation andsystem compliance.

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The African Reclaimers Organisation (ARO) and the Paper and Packaging PRO Alliance have committed to collaborating to ensure compliance with government regulations concerning reclaimers and the payment of service fees owed to them. The PRO Alliance, ARO and SAWPA have also held several meetings to discuss how to improve the efficacy and functioning of the SAWPRS and how to develop national payment systems that integrate with the registration system. Together, we have approached the CSIR to request that they resume technical management of the SAWPRS. Although the practicality and feasibility of this request are still under discussion given the capacity challenges within the CSIR, we hope for a positive outcome. The pilot project that Richard Sengani referred to in the Devi Show is a PRO Alliance project. It took place at the beginning of November and was aimed primarily at testing cashless banking technology as part of the payment system. Encouragingly, over 50 payments were made to waste pickers in the four days of the pilot project. The lessons that were learned are being taken into consideration in the second phase of the pilot, which is being done in partnership with the waste picker organisations. The PRO Alliance, ARO and several other stakeholders came together on Tuesday, 3 December 2024 to test the SAWPRS, with the target being to register around 150 reclaimers and waste pickers at a West Rand landfill site on the day. The aim was also to identify any problems that persist with the deployment of the SAWPRS in the current environment to inform future registration efforts. The PRO Alliance has also committed that all future decisions relating to the development and rollout of reclaimer and waste picker registration initiatives to underpin payment systems will be made jointly with ARO and SAWPA. There is acknowledgement that some PROs are more advanced and committed than others in terms of compliance with the legislation and the shared goal, working with the DFFE, is to strongly encourage those who are lagging to be part of this process.

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