Consumers have forked out more than R100-million to the government from the compulsory plastic bag tax - imposed three years ago to fund a national recycling programme - but to date not a single bag has been recycled from this lucrative fund.
The bulk of the money has gone straight into government coffers.
The government's 3c tax on every plastic carrier bag manufactured or imported into the country is built into the price - from 15c to 21c - that shoppers pay for a bag at the till. The tax was imposed on the manufacturing industry with the intention that the money collected would be used to set up a national recycling programme, which would both clean up the environment and create thousands of jobs.
While the price of plastic bags has meant consumers have not tossed them away as readily as they did in the past, resulting in a noticeable reduction of plastic bag litter, none of the money has been used to recycle plastic bags, nor have any recycling jobs been created.
And although consumers have been paying for carrier bags since May 2003, the South African Revenue Service started collecting the 3c tax only in mid-2004. At the end of the 2004/05 financial year, Sars had collected R41 214 000 from the plastic bag tax and in 2005/06 it collected R61 385 000. Sars collected no plastic bag tax for the 2003/04 financial year. It is not clear where the money from the tax went to in the initial year.
Although former environment minister Valli Moosa introduced the plastic bag tax with the purpose of cleaning up the environment, the Treasury does not allow taxes to be "ring-fenced" - kept in a separate kitty to be used for one purpose. The tax has therefore gone into government coffers, and the department of environment affairs and tourism has to apply to the Treasury to get any of that money back for recycling.
Since 2005, Environment Affairs has got just R18-million of the R102-million plastic bag levy back, which has been used to set up a Section 21 company, called Buyisa-e-Bag, to create and manage the recycling programme. But the company has been battling with red tape, which has meant that although 11 administrative and managerial posts were filled late last year and early this year, not one recycling depot has been established.
Another R5,1-million went to the South African Bureau of Standards, responsible for enforcing the plastic bag regulations, particularly ensuring that none of the former thin plastic carrier bags are produced or imported into the country.
Hennie Neethling, chairperson of the board of Buyisa-e-Bag and past president of the Institute of Waste Management, said Buyisa-e-Bag had encountered "brick walls of red tape" in trying to set up the national recycling initiative.
Neethling, tasked with heading the initiative to set up Buyisa-e-Bag and appoint staff, said land for recycling depots had to be identified and leased from municipalities, environmental impact assessments had to be completed, and permits granted, all of which was taking far longer than expected.
Although industry and labour were represented on the Buyisa-e-Bag board, retailers had pulled out and there was no consumer representation.
Neethling said that because the 3c tax could not be "ring-fenced" for recycling, it had become "just another tax".
"(Finance minister) Trevor Manuel took the levy into his big pockets, but he's got very short arms. We should have put more pressure on the government and been more demanding. Since the 3c levy was imposed, it hasn't paid for a single bag to be recycled," he said.
Before consumers started paying for plastic bags, retailers absorbed the cost into their overheads. Many believe the retailers are now making money out of the plastic bag price.
The Star asked Clicks, Woolworths, Pick 'n Pay and Shoprite - all signatories to the 2002 memorandum of agreement with the department of environment affairs on plastic bags - whether they were making money on the bags. Only Pick 'n Pay and Shoprite replied, both saying they were not, as they charged customers "well below cost" for the bags. Neither would divulge what the cost price was, nor would Nampak Polyfoil, a major plastic bag manufacturer.
Bill Naude, who retired as chairperson of the Plastics Federation of South Africa last month, said he did not believe this. "I would very much like to see that. The retail industry has turned a R400-million a year cost into a R400-million cash flow. That is not a lot in their lives, but it's the principle involved. I reckon they're creaming it."
Joanne Yawitch, deputy director-general of the environmental affairs and tourism department, said on Tuesday night that the department intended to commission a study to assess how successful the plastic bag initiative was. She added that the department recognised that there were some problems with the scheme.