Knowledge Exchange Webinar Series: Advancing WEEE Solutions
A comprehensive series of engagements were designed to facilitate knowledge exchange, research dissemination, and critical engagement across key topical WEEE management challenges. These forums brought together national and international experts, industry practitioners, and academic researchers to address these emerging waste streams. Each engagement produced comprehensive documentation of key findings, collaboration resolutions, and research recommendations, creating valuable resources for ongoing industry research, recycling business development and policy formulation.
Solar Panel End-of-Life Management
In partnership with Nelson Mandela University (NMU), this interactive webinar explored both higher-order waste hierarchy options (repair and reuse) and recycling solutions for end-of-life photovoltaic modules. The session connected South African stakeholders with international expertise from the SRI network in South Africa, India and Ghana, PROs, academic institutions, and scientific councils to identify pain points and develop localised treatment solutions for problematic fractions in PV waste streams.
Access the Solar PV Webinar Report here.
Lithium-Ion Battery Management
Once again in partnership with Nelson Mandela University (NMU), addressing a critical component of driving (South) Africa’s just energy transition, this specialised webinar focused on sustainable management strategies for lithium-ion batteries. The session leveraged international expertise, including the Ghana-based SRI team, to examine collection mechanisms, safe handling protocols, and processing technologies appropriate for the South African context, ensuring environmentally sound management of this rapidly growing waste stream.
Access the Lithium-Ion Battery Webinar Report here.
WEEE Plastics Solutions
This collaborative in-person workshop, jointly facilitated by SRI South Africa and Empa, presented financially feasible, low-cost technologies for WEEE plastics identification and management. Drawing from successful implementations across the global SRI network, the session offered practical guidance for South African recyclers dealing with challenging plastic fractions, including innovative co-processing approaches currently being explored in Ghana. The workshop used, and taught systems thinking approaches to various stakeholders to assess the efficacy of interventions in the management of WEEE plastics based on a birds eye view able to identify and therefore avoid any unintended consequences.
Access the WEEE Plastics Webinar Report here.
