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Waste tyre visit by Deputy Minister ignores SA's ticking time bomb depots

Jan 15, 2026 REDISA, Stacey Jansen, Rustenburg Waste Tyre Depot, Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE)

Waste tyre visit by Deputy Minister ignores SA's ticking time bomb depots

REDISA statement

Against a backdrop of systemic failure and a looming public health catastrophe, the Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Bernice Swarts, visited the Rustenburg Waste Tyre Depot in Tlhabane today. While any government attention to the waste tyre crisis is welcome, the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA) asks rather for urgent action.

"The Rustenburg Waste Tyre Depot is not representative of the dire state of depots across the country," said Stacey Jansen, a Director at REDISA. REDISA asks that the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) address serious governance failures that has turned South Africa’s waste tyre depots into public health and environmental ticking time bombs.

Jansen also added: "Perhaps the Deputy Minister should rather have visited the site of the disastrous Biesiesvlei depot in Lichtenburg, also in the Northwest. In 2023 the depot went up in flames, causing massive environmental damage. Despite the dire warning of Lichtenburg, the Northwest and all other provinces remain threatened by dangerously overburdened depots. Burning tyres causes some of the most severe air pollution possible."

Dr Chris Corzier, executive committee member of REDISA, highlights the scale of the crisis: "The depots are so full that recently the DFFE put out tenders for another 32 waste tyre depots, totalling a million square metres. The latest DFFE Annual Report also shows they underspent on the transport budget because they don't have storage space for the tyres. The DFEE have also just gone to tender to auction off some R100 million worth of equipment that was 'intended' to be used for pre-processing tyres and 'intended' to generate revenue for the Waste Bureau but is not being used. This is bluntly an admission of failure: they can’t deal with the tyres, and spent tens of million on equipment that they can’t put to use. Government is busy with waste tyre storage, not tyre recycling."

South Africa produces at least 70 000 waste tyres every single day. Reports received by REDISA indicate that depots are not following all needed safety protocols, and that trucks are being turned away from overfull depots, leading to illegal dumping next to roads and in riverbeds.

Lack of a responsible waste tyre collection and recycling program has led to:

• Toxic pollution: Illegal burning is releasing carcinogens linked to cancer and birth defects, while toxins leach into essential groundwater.

• Social neglect: The most affected neighbourhoods are informal settlements and urban fringes, where desperate residents also burn tyres for warmth, unknowingly inhaling fumes.

• Wider governance failure: While the government continues to collect a producer-paid levy intended exclusively for waste tyres, more than half of these funds are diverted to purposes other than waste tyres.

Only eight years ago, South Africa was a world leader in waste tyre management. Its established system was a proof-of-concept for applying circular solutions to diverse waste streams. From 2013 to 2017 REDISA, a non-profit company, managed waste tyres in South Africa. In a short space of time, it built 22 tyre collection centres, employed more than 3 000 people, created 226 small waste enterprises. But rather than expand the concept, the then Zuma government moved the whole of waste tyre management under the Waste Management Bureau - from which the department could hand out contracts.

The reality on the ground is one of economic exclusion. Small business entrepreneurs and micro-collectors - once the backbone of a functional system - are now unable to feed their families as the Waste Management Bureau fails to employ them.

Agnes Mbokwana, a former waste tyre collector, today reacted to the Deputy Minister's visit: "The Deputy Minister should visit the streets and open fields around Soweto where the waste tyres are dumped and burnt. Then she could talk to us who are waiting on jobs to collect the tyres and take them to the depots. That's where the system is still broken."

The situation is a missed economic opportunity for the country. Research has shown that a functional waste plan for just 13 waste streams could raise GDP growth by 1.5 percentage points.