Gauteng is home to the only waste management company listed on the Johanneburg Stock Exchange, Enviroserv, with a turnover in the region of R380 million (2001).
Increasingly, chemical firms are motivated by costs and environmental legislation to minimise waste streams through economic exploitation and beneficiation. Efforts are being made to use cleaner technologies with less residue, lower water usage and lower levels of air, water and soil pollution. These processes are referred to as Optimisation Process Innovation (OPI).
A major thrust is to find opportunities for Industrial Ecology Agreements (IEAs) in which the waste stream of one company becomes the feedstock of another.

Strategies being investigated include organic wastes, the refinement of chemical by-products, the creation of Fundafilters, Mintek Pyrometallurgy, the utilisation of spent brewery grains to produce a high-protein animal feed and tyre recycling.

There are opportunities for new and small business development in waste recycling, including the production of fertilisers from waste streams of chemical plants, and glass manufacturing from bottle recycling