**1. Introduction**

The waste managemen<sup>t</sup> challenge is not unique to South Africa. The urban areas in "most lowand middle-income countries" receive unreliable and inadequate municipal solid waste managemen<sup>t</sup> services (Bartone 2004:3). Similar to other developing countries [1–5], many municipalities in South Africa struggle to supply adequate waste managemen<sup>t</sup> services [6,7]. Waste collection coverage in Africa varies between 25% and 70% [8]. In 2012 about 68 million tons of the estimated 125 million tons of waste generated in Africa, was collected [9]. It is projected that by the year 2025 urban waste generation in Africa will reach 441,840 tons per day [10]. In addition to population growth that adds to the volumes of waste generated, increased consumption rates, excessive packaging, and throw-away attitudes aggravate the waste problem and puts pressure on the environment and on limited resources [11–13].

In South Africa, the implementation of the waste managemen<sup>t</sup> hierarchy, as envisaged in national legislation [14,15], provides the required enabling regulatory environment to support a circular economy, i.e., a closed loop system where secondary resources are reintroduced back into the economy. One of the many benefits of moving waste up the hierarchy is that recycling and energy recovery from waste displace the use of virgin resources, which in turn reduce the costs (financial, social, and environmental) associated with virgin resource extraction [16–18]. In 2011, the annual resource value of waste in South Africa was estimated at R25.2b—about 0.86% of South Africa's gross domestic

product (GDP) [18]. Ambitious targets for diverting these recyclables from landfill add to the waste managemen<sup>t</sup> challenge [19].

In an attempt to divert recyclables from landfill, the South African recycling sector has mostly been active to recover recyclables from preconsumer waste, i.e., the recovery of recyclable materials from commercial and industrial processes without a consumer being involved as the end-user. The important role of the informal sector in postconsumer recycling is acknowledged [20], but postconsumer recycling should receive more attention in order to increase recycling rates on a national level, especially if the targets for diversion is to be reached [21,22].

This paper reports on the findings from a baseline study in South Africa to ascertain recycling behavior at household level at a given point in time before the National Environmental Management: Waste Act (NEMWA) (Act No. 59 of 2008) [14] was widely implemented. As a theoretical framework, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is applied to show the relationships between attitude, social pressures, and perceived control over the act of recycling, as determinants of intention to recycle as well as recycling behavior. It is envisaged that the results from this study would inform waste managemen<sup>t</sup> decision-making and highlight areas of possible intervention that would have the most impact at household level to positively change behavior towards increased recycling. Knowing which variables have a greater effect on recycling behavior can guide governmen<sup>t</sup> and industry initiatives and interventions towards implementation of the NEMWA and reaching separation at source targets. Decision-making related to household recycling includes the structure, functioning, and placement of recycling programs, the infrastructure requirements to support behavioral expectations, and the focus of communication strategies and awareness programs.

Following on this short introduction, the rationale for selecting the TPB and a brief introduction to the theoretical framework is provided in the literature section. The third section describes the methodological approach, including a description of the questionnaire content, followed by the statistical method in the fourth section. Section 5 presents the results and discussion and the sixth section summarizes the main conclusions.
