Waste management

National Environmental Management: Waste Act 59 of 2008

National Environmental Management: Waste Act 59 of 2008 or NEMWA is the specific environmental management act regulating waste in South Africa.

Download NEMWA

nEMWA defines ‘waste’ as

  • any substance, material or object, that is unwanted, rejected, abandoned, discarded or disposed of, or that is intended or required to be discarded or disposed of, by the holder of that substance, material or object, whether or not such substance, material or object can be re-used, recycled or recovered and includes all wastes as defined in Schedule 3 to NEMWA; or
  • any other substance, material or object that is not included in Schedule 3 that may be defined as a waste by the Minister by notice in the Gazette.
NEMWA does not apply to:
  • Radioactive waste that is regulated by the Hazardous Substances Act 15 of 1973, the National Nuclear Regulator Act 47 of 1999, and the Nuclear Energy Act 46 of 1999;
  • The disposal of explosives that are regulated by the Explosives Act 15 of 2003.
Did you know?

There is a duty on the South African Government to put in place uniform measures that seek to reduce the amount of waste that is generated and, where waste is generated, to ensure that waste is reused, recycled and recovered in an environmentally sound manner before being safely treated and disposed of.

NEMWA creates a general duty on people to:

  • avoid the generation of waste and where such generation cannot be avoided, to minimise the toxicity and amounts of waste that are generated;

  • reduce, reuse, recycle and recover waste;

  • where waste must be disposed of, ensure that the waste is treated and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner;

  • manage the waste in such a manner that it does not endanger health or the environment or cause a nuisance through noise, odour or visual impacts;

  • prevent any employee or any person under his or her supervision from contravening this Act; and

  • prevent the waste from being used for an unauthorised purpose.

There is a list of waste management activities that have or may have a detrimental effect on the environment. These activities are divided into three categories:

 

Category A

You must conduct a basic assessment process set out in the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations as part of a waste management licence application

Category B

You must conduct a scoping and environmental impact reporting process set out in the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations as part of a waste management licence application

Category C

You must comply with the relevant requirements or standards

Waste Management Activities

Littering is prohibited under NEMWA: in terms of section 27 “no person may throw, drop, deposit, spill or in any other way discard any litter into or onto any public place, land, vacant erf, stream, watercourse, street or road, or on any place to which the general public has access, except in a container or a place specifically provided for that purpose.”

NEMWA regulates contaminated land, see sections 35-41, very importantly no one can transfer contaminated land without informing the buyer that the land is contaminated. ‘contaminated’, is defined in NEMWA as “the presence in or under any land, site, buildings or structures of a substance or microorganism above the concentration that is normally present in or under that land, which substance or micro-organism directly or indirectly affects or may affect the quality of soil or the environment adversely.”