Waste Picker Integration

"Waste Picker Integration – the creation of a formally planned recycling system that values and improves the present role of waste pickers, builds on the strengths of their existing system for collecting and revaluing materials, and includes waste pickers as key partners in its design, implementation, evaluation and revision."

In 2019, the South African Government released the Waste Picker Integration Guideline for South Africa: Building the recycling economy and improving livelihoods through integration of the informal sector.

The Guideline (see full document here) was developed through a three-year participatory stakeholder process and explains what waste picker integration is, why it is important, and how to work in partnership with waste pickers to design and implement waste picker programmes.

Waste picker integration includes not only the integration of waste pickers’ work, but also the political, economic, social, legal and environmental integration of waste pickers.

Our most immediate focus is to address this burning need of waste picker registration and payment of service fees.

SAWPRS bridges informal and formal recycling systems

The Government-initiated national database, the South African Waste Picker Registration System (SAWPRS), is intended to ensure 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.

SAWPRS enables PROs to record transactions and service fee payments, analyse collection volumes by area and province, and streamline information sharing and reporting.

This centralised system will provide data-driven insights to optimise operations and track impact across South Africa’s waste picker network.

Waste picker service fees

The Guideline recommends that the payment of the waste picker service fee should be contingent upon waste pickers being verified by representative organisations and registered on SAWPRS.

To facilitate the payment of the service fee, SAWPRS comes together with a transactional system that records the purchase of materials from the waste pickers and a closed-loop cashless payment system that will reduce cash handling and enable the quick and secure payment of waste picker service fees.

waste pickers service fee integration cycle

Our Role

The PRO Alliance and its PRO members are accelerating waste picker integration, working with a technical service provider, waste picker organisations and targeted buy-back centres.

The BBC 200 Project is a focused flagship initiative to integrate waste pickers into South Africa’s EPR system by digitising buy-back centres (BBCs) across South Africa.

At the same time, there will be a parallel programme to ensure the integration of individual PRO programmes onto SAWPRS, which will ensure that all waste pickers are registered and verified on the national database and provide an auditable record of payments through each PRO’s transactional system.

The PRO Alliance and its PRO members are accelerating waste picker integration, working with a technical service provider, waste picker organisations and targeted  buy-back centres.

The BBC 200 Project is a focused flagship initiative to integrate waste pickers into South Africa’s EPR system by digitising buy-back centres (BBCs) across South Africa. At the same time, there will be a parallel programme to ensure the integration of individual PRO programmes onto SAWPRS, which will ensure that all waste pickers are registered and verified on the national database and provide an auditable record of payments through each PRO’s transactional system.

Building awareness

PRO Alliance is working with representative waste picker organisations to initiate targeted awareness and education campaigns to inform waste pickers about registration opportunities and integration programmes.

This ensures waste pickers understand the support services available to them.

Critical support for formal and informal collection systems

Waste picker integration is – rightly – the critical focus area, but it is important to note that the payment of the waste picker service fees is largely the tip of the iceberg.

What the PRO Alliance and its members have done with the development of a database and payment system is a world first, but material-specific value chains provide the market dynamics that determine material prices paid by BBCs to the waste pickers.

The value comes in creating demand for recycled products, ensuring capacity exists to recycle the material and supporting various collection mechanisms – of which the waste pickers are a part, alongside formal collection mechanisms.