What does a circular economy for South Africa look like?
When we take from nature, we must take it with the intent to use it wisely, and don’t take too much
South Africa needs to phase out coalbased power generation, reduce exports of non-renewable resources and focus on developing the nation to achieve a circular economy. These are recommendations from a recent study that quantified all the materials used in the country in a year and the resulting waste and emissions.
The research was conducted by Professor Harro von Blottnitz from the University of Cape Town’s Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment. He collaborated with and used a sophisticated material flow analysis tool developed by Dr Willi Haas and his counterparts at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna, Austria.
A circular economy moves away from the unsustainable linear “take-make-waste” model by improving the way that finite resources are used, lengthening their lifetime, and minimising waste. Von Blottnitz’s analysis, which focused on data from 2017, found that South Africa is far from circular.
The country’s extraction of all food, minerals, metal ores and coal amounted to 875-million tonnes (Mt). Exports, consisting predominantly of refined metals and coal, weighed in at 170 Mt and imports at a comparatively small 32 Mt. South Africa generated high levels of waste, with 310 Mt of solid and liquid waste returned to nature. Waste from mining activities accounted for 171 Mt and carbon emissions from technical processes, humans and livestock to 175 Mt.
This shows that South Africa’s economy, which was built around mining, is still dominated by what
Von Blottnitz calls the minerals-energy complex. Finite resources are excavated and exported and the coal that remains in the country is burnt to produce power. Both activities are inherently linear.
“When you’ve got a dig and take mentality, then you don’t build the permanency that one would associate with a circular domestic economy,” says Von Blottnitz. While this relates to our mining of fossil fuels, it also refers to the study’s finding that South Africa suffers from a low rate of domestic stock building. This means there has been a lack of investment into long lasting infrastructure such as roads, power grids, buildings and durable consumer goods.
Government should scale back on our reliance on fossil fuels for power and reduce exports and focus instead on developing the nation, says Von Blottnitz. “The domestic economy matters when you look at the circular economy. South Africa has a problem with its inherited domestic economy and inequality problem. We need to address the fact that many of our compatriots still live in shacks.”
Addressing this in part means that resource extraction and manufacturing must be designed in a way that ensures the population gets the best services with the least extraction of resources. Infrastructure and goods must be designed to be suitable for recycling when they reach the end of their life. Circularity is about using resources wisely and prioritising reuse above recycling, Von Blottnitz points out.
“The first time you hear ‘circular economy’ you think of end-of-life and recycling. But the circular economy is all about the front-of-life and what we take from nature. And when we take from nature, we must take it with the intent to use it wisely
and don’t take too much, because that damages nature and undermines what the environment does for us, and of course, also takes from the future generation’s opportunity to take from nature.”
The department of forestry, fisheries and the environment has already incorporated the concept of the circular economy into legislation that predominantly focuses on waste management. Minister Barbara Creecy has on more than one occasion alluded to the importance of the green economy in the country’s post-covid-19 reconstruction and recovery plan. In April she told the World Circular Economy Forum that the plan “promotes waste recycling, renewable energy generation, revitalising our ecotourism and forestry sectors; and retrofitting government buildings to save on water and energy consumption”.
While Von Blottnitz welcomed these regulations and strategies, he commented that other government departments such as the departments of trade, industry and competition; human settlements; the presidency and treasury needed to do more to incorporate and act on circular economy principles.