What Happens If You Don’t Comply with EPR?
Picture the scene: A mid-sized importer receives a routine compliance query. The company sells electrical goods, batteries and packaged products into South Africa. It has a DFFE producer registration number for one stream, but not for all. Its placed-on-market data sits in spreadsheets across finance, sales and logistics. The board assumes the company has “joined a scheme”, but the records show under-reported volumes, unpaid EPR fees and gaps in South African Waste Information System (SAWIS) reporting.
This is where EPR non-compliance stops being an admin issue.
Under South Africa’s Extended Producer Responsibility framework, producers must know whether their products fall into identified product categories, register correctly, participate in an EPR scheme or establish their own, report accurate data and fund the post-consumer management of those products. Free riding is not just unfair to compliant competitors. It is a defined compliance risk that can expose a business to legal, financial, reputational and commercial consequences.
What Counts as Non-Compliance?
Falling short of compliance can take several forms. The most obvious is failing to register as a producer with the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) if your company places identified products on the South African market.
It also includes failing to join an extended producer responsibility scheme, failing to establish and implement your own approved scheme, or appointing a Producer Responsibility Organisation without maintaining the internal records needed to support accurate reporting.
For boards and senior management, the most common risks often sit in the detail:
A company may report only selected product lines while excluding accessories, spares, private-label products or imported goods. It may use sales values instead of actual placed-on-market volumes. It may treat EPR fees as a discretionary sustainability cost rather than a regulatory funding obligation. It may keep poor records across entities, branches or product categories, making audit trails difficult to defend.
Free riding also has an internal dimension. A company may appear compliant because it belongs to a PRO, but still under-report volumes or avoid its proportionate share of scheme costs. This weakens the collective system and shifts costs to compliant producers who fund collection, recycling, reporting, audits and public awareness.
For practical guidance on identified sectors, producers can review our EPR sector overview.
Legal and Financial Consequences
The EPR Regulations create clear producer obligations. These include
- registration,
- scheme participation,
- fee payment or funding,
- record keeping,
- performance reporting,
- financial and performance audits, and
- submission of data to the relevant national reporting systems.
Failure to comply can trigger offences under the Regulations. The legal exposure is serious: a person convicted of an offence under the Regulations may face imprisonment, an appropriate fine, or both. A registered producer that fails to comply may also have its registration revoked or be compelled to join another EPR scheme. A non-compliant PRO may have its registration revoked.
This matters because EPR obligations sit within the wider National Environmental Management: Waste Act framework. Non-compliance can therefore create more than a once-off penalty risk. It can lead to directives, verification audits, enforcement action, retrospective fee exposure, and potential liability linked to waste management failures or environmental harm.
Financially, the risk extends beyond fines. A company that under-reports placed-on-market volumes may need to correct historical declarations and settle unpaid fees. It may also face audit, legal, and internal remediation costs.
For a board, the test is simple: can management prove, with auditable records,
- what products the business placed on the market,
- which EPR streams apply,
- what volumes were declared,
- what fees were paid, and
- what reports were submitted?
Reputational and Commercial Risk
Retailers, funders, public entities and large private buyers increasingly expect suppliers to prove environmental compliance. ESG questionnaires, tender submissions and investor due diligence processes now ask more direct questions about waste, product stewardship, recycling obligations and regulatory risk.
A producer that cannot show valid registration, scheme membership, paid-up EPR contributions and credible reporting may face delayed tenders, supplier onboarding concerns, negative audit findings or tougher contractual warranties. In sectors such as electrical and electronic equipment, lighting, paper and packaging, portable batteries and lubricant oils, EPR compliance now forms part of responsible market participation.
The reputational risk is also competitive. Compliant producers build EPR fees into pricing, fund take-back systems and contribute to national recycling targets. Free riders avoid those costs while benefiting from the infrastructure others pay for. That creates an unfair advantage in the market and places additional pressure on responsible producers.
Good EPR governance therefore protects more than legal standing. It protects the company’s licence to operate, its brand credibility and its relationships with customers, investors, regulators and industry partners.
Emerging Enforcement Patterns
Enforcement is moving toward better data, stronger verification and closer cooperation between agencies.
The DFFE can review EPR scheme performance and conduct verification audits. Reporting through SAWIS and the EPR portal gives regulators a clearer view of placed-on-market volumes, collection, recycling, recovery and landfill diversion. Fee submissions and fee methodologies also create another layer of scrutiny, because producers and PROs must show how EPR fees relate to the real cost of collection, treatment, recycling, administration, public awareness and system surveillance.
The Draft National Policy for the Management of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment signals a sharper focus on free riders. It refers to identifying external and internal free riders, collaborative reporting through PROs, and the use of customs-related controls as an early point of detection. This is especially relevant for importers, where South African Revenue Service (SARS), Customs, International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (ITAC) and Treasury-linked processes can help identify products entering the South African market.
Over the next three to five years, companies can expect more cross-checking between import data, sales data, PRO declarations, SAWIS submissions, audit reports and sector targets. The risk for free riders is not only that DFFE identifies them directly. The risk is that customers, competitors, PROs, auditors, customs controls or tender processes expose the gap first.
Oversight Questions
EPR should appear in board packs as a compliance, financial and sustainability matter. It should not sit only with operations or marketing.
A practical reporting format should show applicable product streams, producer registrations, PRO memberships, placed-on-market volumes, EPR fees paid, reporting deadlines, audit status, material risks and corrective actions. These items should feed into the company risk register and link to audit committee and sustainability committee oversight.
Boards and management teams should ask:
- Which of our products, brands, imports, private-label goods and packaging fall under EPR?
- Do we hold valid DFFE producer registrations for every applicable stream?
- Have we joined a registered PRO or established our own compliant scheme for each relevant product class?
- Can finance, sales and logistics reconcile placed-on-market volumes to the data we submit?
- Have we paid the correct EPR fees and retained evidence for audit?
- Are EPR risks, deadlines and corrective actions visible to the audit committee, sustainability committee and executive team?
If management cannot answer these questions with documents, the business has a governance gap.
Compliance as a Minimum
A producer that treats EPR as a last-minute reporting task will always remain exposed. A producer that integrates EPR into product design, procurement, data management, supplier onboarding and sustainability reporting can reduce risk and create measurable value.
Boards should ask how the company can move from minimum compliance to better product stewardship. That may include improving recyclability, strengthening take-back partnerships, reducing problematic materials, supporting local recyclers, improving data quality, and using EPR reporting to inform circular economy strategy.
This does not remove the producer’s legal accountability. Joining a PRO helps, but it does not give management permission to ignore its own records, volumes or product decisions. The producer still needs accurate internal systems and a clear chain of responsibility.
A good EPR control environment should answer three questions: Are we legally covered? Are our numbers correct? Are we using compliance data to improve decisions?
How eWASA helps
eWASA supports producers that need a practical route through South Africa’s EPR requirements. As a registered Producer Responsibility Organisation, eWASA works across electrical and electronic equipment, lighting, paper and packaging, portable batteries and lubricant oils.
For producers with obligations in more than one stream, the one-stop-shop model reduces duplication and gives management a clearer view of EPR requirements across the business. eWASA assists with scheme membership, regulatory guidance, reporting support, placed-on-market declarations, compliance documentation, industry updates and access to collection and recycling networks.
This helps producers reduce risk, but it also strengthens the wider system. When producers report accurately and pay their fair share, EPR schemes can fund collection, recycling, awareness, recycler development and circular economy infrastructure more effectively.
Free riding weakens the system. Compliance protects it.
For producers that need to assess their obligations, eWASA’s EPR compliance guidance and membership information provide a clear starting point.
Resources
- Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. (2020a). National Environmental Management: Waste Act (59/2008): Regulations regarding extended producer responsibility (Government Notice No. R.1184, Government Gazette No. 43879). Government of South Africa.
- Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. (2020b). National Environmental Management: Waste Act (59/2008): Extended producer responsibility scheme for the electrical and electronic equipment sector (Government Notice No. R.1185, Government Gazette No. 43880). Government of South Africa.
- Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. (2021). Amendments to the Regulations and Notices regarding Extended Producer Responsibility, 2020 (Government Notice No. 400, Government Gazette No. 44539). Government of South Africa.
- Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. (2024). Guideline and toolkit for the determination of extended producer responsibility fees (Government Notice No. 5535, Government Gazette No. 51534). Government of South Africa.
- Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. (2025a). National policy for the management of waste electrical and electronic equipment (Government Notice No. 6554, Government Gazette No. 53243). Government of South Africa.
- Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. (2025b). Consultation on the Draft National Waste Management Strategy (NWMS) 2026 (Government Notice No. 6972, Government Gazette No. 53894). Government of South Africa.
- EPR Waste Association of South Africa. (n.d.-a). Extended producer responsibility sectors. Retrieved June 23, 2026, from https://ewasa.org/epr/sectors-epr-waste-association-of-south-africa-ewasa/
- EPR Waste Association of South Africa. (n.d.-b). Join eWASA for EPR compliance. Retrieved June 23, 2026, from https://ewasa.org/membership/
- Republic of South Africa. (2008). National Environmental Management: Waste Act 59 of 2008. Government of South Africa.
