At first light, a lone figure pushes a battered metal trolley along a suburban street, scooping plastic bottles and copper wires from the curb. For many South Africans this is a daily routine, but the money that ends up in the picker’s pocket can vary dramatically.
According to the BusinessTech article, the bulk of informal waste reclaimers earn between R300 and R600 per week, roughly R1 200 to R2 400 a month. A 2022 academic report cited in the piece found that 39% fall in the R300-to-R600 bracket, while the lowest earnings recorded were R100 per week. At the opposite end of the scale, the most productive pickers, often those who specialise in electronic waste such as cables and screens, can pull in as much as R7 000 a week, which translates to R28 000 a month. That amount exceeds the national average formal salary of R26 894 per month.
Formal municipal waste collectors, employed by organisations such as Pikitup, receive a stable contract. The February 2026 general worker intake at Pikitup is paid a basic salary of R10 616.38 per month, plus benefits like medical aid, pension contributions and supplied protective gear. Their income does not fluctuate with market prices for recyclables, unlike the informal sector.
The informal sector is not a marginal side-show. The National Waste Management Strategy (NWMS) released earlier this year estimates that between 60 000 and 90 000 informal reclaimers recover about 90% of all post-consumer paper and packaging in the country. That recovery saves municipalities between R300 million and R750 million each year in landfill costs, even though the pickers operate without formal contracts or predictable income.
Policy backdrop
The draft NWMS 2026 seeks to shift the perception of informal waste pickers from peripheral actors to central participants in the circular economy. It proposes to embed them in the regulated waste system through updated Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations. EPR, a framework that makes producers financially responsible for the end-of-life handling of their products, will, under the 2026 guidelines, pay registered reclaimers a standardised tariff of 15 cents per kilogram of material sold. Registration is managed through the South African Waste Picker Registration System (SAWPRS), which records and acknowledges each picker.
The African Reclaimers Organisation (ARO), a representative body for informal collectors, has called the 15 c/kg rate a “slave wage” and is demanding renegotiation for a living wage. Without a higher tariff, the earnings gap between the most successful informal pickers and the majority remains wide, and the sustainability of the sector could be questioned.
For small-business owners in the waste-management value chain, the policy shift presents both opportunity and risk. Entrepreneurs who can help informal pickers register with SAWPRS may tap into the EPR tariff stream, turning a low-margin activity into a modest revenue source. Partnerships with formal municipalities could also open contracts for collection, sorting or transport services that bridge the informal-formal divide. However, the current tariff level means that large-scale profitability will likely depend on volume and on securing higher-value streams such as e-waste, rather than on basic paper and packaging.
In short, the earnings picture for South Africa’s bin pickers is a study in extremes. While a handful can earn more than a municipal employee, most survive on a fraction of that amount. The draft NWMS 2026 aims to formalise the sector and provide a baseline payment, but the adequacy of that payment remains contested. The outcome will shape not only the livelihoods of thousands of informal workers but also the business case for small firms looking to operate in the country’s recycling ecosystem.
Why the income gap within the informal sector is itself the story
The wide spread between the median informal picker’s roughly R1,200 to R2,400 a month and the top earners’ R28,000 is arguably more informative than either figure alone, because it shows the sector is not one undifferentiated activity but a hierarchy sorted by which material a picker can access. E-waste, cables, circuit boards and specialised components, commands a far higher price per kilogram than ordinary paper and packaging, so a picker’s income is determined less by hours worked than by which waste stream they can reach, a function of route, location and often informal territorial arrangements between pickers that outsiders rarely see. That structure matters for the EPR tariff debate: a flat 15 cents per kilogram rate treats a kilogram of low-value packaping and a kilogram of high-value e-waste identically, which is precisely why a uniform tariff can look generous to a high-value specialist and punitive to the majority of pickers working the far more common, lower-value material.
