INDUSTRY WHITEPAPER - AWRE · outperforming us, including the UK, Norway, Denmark and the United...

INDUSTRY WHITEPAPERWASTE AND RECYCLING: CRUNCH TIME

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CONTENTS03 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

04 OVERVIEW

03 CHINA NATIONAL SWORD: CHALLENGE, OPPORTUNITY

06 RUBBISH: COMMODITY OR CURSE?

09 BETTER REPORTING, BETTER POLICY

10 PUBLIC EDUCATION, COMMUNITY ANGER

12 WHAT ABOUT E-WASTE?

14 CONCLUSION

AWRE 2019 INDUSTRY WHITEPAPER 2

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYAs a young, energy-rich country with plenty of space, Australia has never prioritised recycling household and industry waste very highly. For many years it was simply easier – and more cost-effective – to export reusable material such as plastics, paper and metals to other countries that had more efficient facilities.

But China’s decision in 2018 to close its doors to low-grade waste from countries such as Australia forced the federal government, and others, to rethink how to handle the nation’s waste and whether we could do more to divert recoverable material from our ever-expanding landfills and warehouse stockpiles.

In the lead-up to the Australasian Waste & Recycling Expo (AWRE) at Sydney’s Darling Harbour in October 2019, Diversified Communications Australia, the organisers of AWRE conducted a wide-ranging survey of stakeholders to identify the key issues (and opportunities) the waste and recycling sector faces.

While the results are not definitive, the survey reveals the sheer diversity of Australia’s waste and recycling sector – representing everything from retail to aged care – and an overarching sense of optimism about the future, despite the short-term challenges following the loss of export markets.

Respondents, who came from every state and territory, pinpointed several opportunities for the home-grown industry, especially in the areas of energy generation and smarter recycling practices to prevent so much valuable material ending up in council landfills.

Indeed, 54 per cent of those surveyed said they were confident that new recycling technology, especially in energy generation, would transform the sector over the next one-to-three years.

Asked to nominate the main drivers for bringing about radical changes to Australia’s waste and recycling sector, respondents nominated

government policy, technology and international trends – with some also identifying climate change as a major influence on public policy and community attitudes.

Not surprisingly, there is still widespread concern about China’s National Sword policy, which dramatically cut Australia’s export of plastics, paper, metal and other waste materials to that market. A majority of respondents said neither federal nor state initiatives had helped their business navigate the challenging new recycling and waste-recovery landscape.

Looking ahead, most of those surveyed said they were only expecting moderate growth in demand for their products or services over the next 12 months. Very few expected substantial growth.

Despite this caution about 40 per cent of businesses and organisations surveyed said they expected to make a significant investment over the next few years in response to shifting waste and recycling demands; the same percentage were uncommitted.

Organisations cited research and development, technology and innovation, and product development as their major investment priorities over the next three years – and they also expect to hire extra staff during the same timeframe.

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54%

are confident in new recycling technology, especially energy generation.


OVERVIEWAustralia’s long-term waste and recycling policies were thrown into turmoil by China’s decision to ban the importation of 24 types of waste, including some plastics and paper, from 1 January 2018. Chinese authorities also imposed tougher standards for contamination levels found in imported waste.

The high cost of recycling, following China’s decision to restrict imports of Australian waste, means that many councils are now abandoning their own recycling schemes and sending everything to landfill; adding further pressure on municipal dumps. Councils in Victoria and New South Wales have already gone down this route and others may follow. Local Government New South Wales president Linda Scott says a number of councils are struggling to process recycling and extra funding from state government is needed: “This has been a really urgent, big problem around New South Wales.”

Although statistics compiled by the Department of the Environment and Energy suggest Australia has improved its recycling rates over the past 11 years, the China National Sword policy, announced in 2017, could seriously damage this optimistic trend.

It could also dent the federal government’s stated ambition to reduce total waste per capita by 10 per cent, phase out problematic plastics and divert 80 per cent of waste from landfill – all by 2030.

Australia currently recovers about 58 per cent of its waste through recycling and energy generation, but other developed economies are outperforming us, including the UK, Norway, Denmark and the United States.

The statistics clearly show that Australia generates more waste than the average Western economy and the proportion it recycles is a little less than the average. Recovery rates are also lower.

Far from throwing Australia’s waste and recycling industries into crisis, most observers believe that China’s decision to restrict its import of foreign waste presents an opportunity to develop homegrown solutions to the growing problem of waste.

According to Rose Read, the CEO of the National Waste and Recycling Industry Council, Australia had become far too reliant on shipping low-grade waste overseas to places such as China and needed to come up with better, more forward-thinking solutions.

“It has brought a sharp focus on what happens to our waste materials,” she says. “Because China was there and would take a lot of our waste, there has really not been a lot of necessity to further process our materials to a higher standard. China would happily take baled material – and that’s what the market was.”

Departmental advisers in Canberra believe that by adopting new initiatives such as product stewardship and a national container deposit system, Australia can dramatically cut the amount of waste it generates and provide compelling incentives for both consumers and manufacturers to take responsibility for their waste.

“Product stewardship is one area where national leadership is required,” reads the Federal Department of the Environment and Energy’s National Waste Report 2018. “Product stewardship agreements can reduce waste and improve its management through shared responsibility,

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“Litter surveys and anecdotal reports suggest container deposit schemes reduce litter and improve recycling in regional and remote communities...”


National Food Waste Strategy An astonishing volume of the food bought every day in Australian supermarkets and grocery stores ends up in landfill. In 2016-17, we generated 5 million tonnes of food waste, including hazardous food waste, of which 76 per cent went into landfill, 18 per cent was recycled and only 1 per cent used to generate energy.

In November 2017, the federal government launched a National Food Waste Strategy, which provides a framework for supporting collective action towards halving Australia’s food waste by 2030.

Implementation of the strategy was supported by an initial $1.37 million investment over 24 months. The federal

government, the states and territories have provided $1 million of these funds to Food Innovation Australia Limited (FIAL).

In 2019, FIAL will deliver an implementation plan that sets out the actions needed to support reductions in food waste, and a monitoring and evaluation framework to measure the nation’s progress towards achieving the 50 per cent reduction target set by the federal government.

As part of its mandate, FIAL will also establish a voluntary commitment program to engage business in food waste reduction activities.

including with manufacturers. Sometimes a levy on initial purchases is used to fund the changes needed.”

Another area of rapid policy development is container deposit schemes, the report notes. “A container deposit scheme has been in place in South Australia since 1977 but until recently all other states and territories, supported by the packaging and beverage industries, preferred to focus on local government collection systems.

“Litter surveys and anecdotal reports suggest container deposit schemes reduce litter and improve recycling in regional and remote communities. Environmental groups have long advocated for a container deposit scheme and see its proliferation as a victory that will reduce litter, improve recovery and raise awareness about the costs and value of recycling.”

Industry analysts are also impressed that issues around waste and recycling featured so prominently in the May 2019 federal election, with both major parties plus the Greens releasing detailed policy statements and promising generous funding arrangements.

The CEO of the Australian Council of Recycling, Peter Shmigel, says it was the first time both the Liberal Party and the ALP had pledged substantial action in the area of waste and recycling during an election campaign.

“The overall level of engagement in terms of policymaking, especially at the Commonwealth level, is definitely going up,” Shmigel says. “I believe that’s because of community pressure as well as the closure of China and other Asian countries as a market for our waste.”

In its policy statement, the Liberal-National Coalition said it had already invested $50 million in a National Food Waste Strategy aimed at halving Australia’s food waste by 2030. It also promised that this policy would create jobs, protect the health of communities and reduce environmental impacts. The Coalition said it was also committed to tyre recycling and the removal of microbeads from waterways.

Experts agree that data reporting is one issue that needs to be resolved urgently before the nation can begin to achieve any of the federal government’s ambitious new targets for waste reduction, recovery and recycling. At the moment, the Department of the Environment and Energy compiles its annual waste report using a range of sources, including state

governments and private companies – few of which use the same or similar methodologies.

Shmigel says that while data collection methods are improving, some states are not confident about the accuracy of their data and many other organisations take part on a purely voluntary basis.

“It’s great to have a national waste report but we actually don’t have a national waste report where everyone agrees on the metrics being used,” he says.

Read, from the National Waste and Recycling Industry Council, says the department is working with the Australian Bureau of Statistics to develop a series of standardised national waste accounts for government and business.

“At the moment, waste data comes from a number of places such as local government and private businesses,” she says. “The requirements on reporting are variable and the data that is collected is different from state to state, then it’s built up into a national database. Even the definition of waste varies.”

Ever-increasing community concern about the widespread use of plastics and polythene in food packaging and how this impacts marine life suggests that waste and what we do with it is not about to drop off the political agenda any time soon.

At the same time, consumer-led campaigns to curb the use of disposable coffee cups and plastic straws in cafes and take-away food outlets show that the public can and will change its behaviour if given the correct information.

Rohan Dinn, General Manager of WasteMaster Pacific, says that while Australia still lags well behind the UK and Europe in its disposal of food and other organic waste, there are some positive changes taking place.

Launched some four years ago in the UK and with offices in Japan and Victoria, the company builds anaerobic digesters that convert unwanted food into compost-like residual material, freeing up available landfill and lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

“I’ve noticed a dramatic change since we set up our Australian operation in 2017,” he says. “We’re feeling very optimistic, but you need to recognise that Australia is a small and fragmented market. The real growth [for us] is overseas in places like the UK, Spain, UAE and the United States.”


CHINA NATIONAL SWORD: CHALLENGE, OPPORTUNITYWhile China’s decision to curb the imports of many types of recyclable materials in 2018 was widely expected within Australia’s waste and recycling sector, its impact was immediate and dramatic.

The latest figures available from the Department of the Environment and Energy show Australia’s exports of plastics, paper and scrap metal were all badly affected. Worst hit was plastics – exports fell by 78 per cent in 2017-18 – while the export of paper and cardboard fell by 39 per cent during the same period.

Overall, Australian exports to China of all types of waste materials for recycling decreased from 1.25 megatonnes to 0.75 megatones for the period between 2016 and 2018 – a decline of 40 per cent.

Rather than despairing at China’s decision to reject so much of the world’s waste materials, industry analysts see the China National Sword policy as a wake-up call for Australian business and a catalyst for real change.

“The China National Sword issue has exposed what we are not doing in Australia. It has helped jolt some state agencies and the federal government into action and the need for policy reform,” says John Gertsakis, director and co-founder of the Ewaste Watch Institute

“Until May 2019 waste and recycling was never on the federal election agenda, so China National Sword and programs like the War on Waste have been a catalyst for reform, new investment in infrastructure and increased consumer action, especially on plastics pollution.”

Experts say that rather than simply exporting low-grade waste overseas, Australia must focus its efforts on reducing the volume of kerbside waste being generated and introduce legislation that will force manufacturers to reclaim their products for future use.

Jenni Downes, a research consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures at UTS, thinks the China ban is the wake-up call the industry needed. “Those disruptions have a great deal of pain at first,” she says. “There will be problems, but there could be great solutions.”

As well as improving local levels of recycling, Downes says it’s time to look at other options, such as bottle deposit schemes – through which glass and plastic bottles are returned, sterilised and reused. In Germany, the Pfand (deposit) system provides incentives for drinks companies to supply their products in multi-use plastic or glass bottles. Customers pay a deposit on the bottle, which is refunded when the bottles are returned.

Rather than going through the entire recycling process after each use, Downes says the bottles are washed, sterilised and refilled up to 50 times. Reusing a product is far less energy intensive than putting it through the recycling process and eliminates any risk of it ending up in landfill. “Recycling should be considered the last line of defence,” she says.

But as Peter Shmigel, from the Australian Council of Recycling, explains, the waste and recycling sector in Australia is extremely diverse – some of the waste streams, such as paper and cardboard, are still performing well despite China National Sword.

“We have to remember that the pressure is only on one aspect or slice of the pie of Australian recycling and that’s kerbside recycling,” he says. “The other parts of the recycling scene are actually doing fine.”

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RUBBISH: COMMODITY OR CURSE?At the core of Australia’s recycling problem is the issue of price. Recovering rare earth metals from smartphones is not a problem because these metals are valuable and there are a number of willing markets on our doorstep, such as Korea and Japan.

But what will we do with our growing stockpiles of low-grade glass and plastic that are costly to reprocess? In addition to the low demand for this material, Australia does not have the necessary infrastructure to recycle this particular type of waste.

Peter Shmigel says Australia urgently needs to create a sustainable recycling industry instead of shipping waste overseas or putting it into stockpiles or landfill.

“It’s both a technology and a commodity price issue,” he says. “On the one hand, the price is falling for the stuff we collect and, on the other, we don’t have a reprocessing capacity to accept that material.”

Creating a level playing field so that recycled material can compete with virgin material will not be easy – even though consumers are generally aware that the planet has a finite amount of non-renewable resources such as coal, gas and oil.

Waste Management & Respurce Recovery Association of Australia (WMRR) president Garth Lamb says guidelines are needed to ensure councils and businesses prioritise recycled goods over virgin materials, or at least have quotas for recycled material. Better prices for recycled material would enable more waste to be diverted from landfill.

“A lot of decisions [at a council level] are made based on what’s the lowest cost service provision and that’s not where we want to be,” Lamb says. “We need to be in a position where we’re providing real value to communities, not just trying to do everything at the lowest cost possible.”

Instead of allowing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of glass to sit in stockpiles or get dumped in landfill, Lamb would like the material to be broken down into sand and used for road construction – meaning much less mining of new sand.

“Obviously, if on one side of your business you need sand and on the other side of your business you’re making sand, you ought to be able to do a deal,” he says. “If we can’t get glass right, then there’s something seriously wrong with the focus on recycling in Australia. It’s an apathy issue – people just don’t care enough to bother trying.”

One solution could be to widen mandatory product stewardship schemes across Australia. This approach recognises that manufacturers, importers, governments and consumers have a shared responsibility for the environmental impacts of a product throughout its full life cycle. Analysis for the Australian Council of Recycling by independent sustainability consultancy Equilibrium suggests such schemes are remarkably affordable and effective.

Mandatory schemes involve establishing regulations that require some manufacturers to take specific actions. This could include restricting the manufacture or import of products, prohibiting products from containing particular substances, labelling and packaging requirements and other requirements for reusing, recovering, treating or disposing of products.

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“If we can’t get glass right, then there’s something seriously wrong with the focus on recycling in Australia...”


The cost of a mandatory e-waste scheme is estimated to be between $1.55 and $1.85 per unit. The cost of recycling a standard double mattress is between $14.50 and $16.50. The cost of a mandatory tyre recycling scheme would be modest.

Shmigel says the Australian community has long supported recycling and overwhelmingly wants to be able to recycle more products.

“This new data shows that we can do so affordably,” Shmigel says. “In all cases, the cost of recycling these items is likely to be lower than 2 per cent of their consumer price. Therefore, cost concerns should not be a key barrier to action by our policymakers.”

Shmigel also says that recycling of these items is a well-established practice overseas, including in much less developed countries, and it is difficult to understand why it is not here, too.

“Indeed, the formal review of Australia’s Product Stewardship Act has disappeared and is significantly overdue and the new National Waste Policy has a blank space for product stewardship,” Shmigel says.

Equilibrium managing director Nick Harford says that while there is room for improvement, the current co-regulated TV, computer and smartphone product stewardship schemes are producing good results. There has been no demonstrable consumer concern about their cost.

“While the current schemes are not mandatory, and research estimates that mandatory schemes may have higher administration costs, the estimated cost per unit in relation to the total product cost is generally reasonable,” Harford says.

Smarter bin technology, such as solar-powered waste compactors, are already having an impact on how commercial operators, such as restaurants, shopping centres and airports, dispose of their waste.

The Telford Smith company says its compactor bins not only hold up to seven times more waste than conventional bins, they also reduce the cost of transporting waste to landfill – thus lowering our carbon footprint.

According to general manager David Picone, smart bins, which feature a modem-based communication system, are more efficient, cleaner and hygienic than conventional bins. They are also resistant to vandalism and can be locked and unlocked remotely.

“The payback on these bins for a shopping centre over 12 to 15 months is great, with efficiencies on staff savings for collection,” he says.

“Smarter bin technology, such as solar-powered waste compactors, are already having an impact on how commercial operators, such as restaurants, shopping centres and airports, dispose of their waste....”


BETTER REPORTING, BETTER POLICYHow can Australian planners and policymakers come up with creative solutions to the nation’s waste problem without reliable data?

Observers say that to compile its annual waste report, the Department of the Environment and Energy is forced to rely on data from a wide range of sources, including state government and recycling companies. Methodologies differ from state to state and across industry sectors – even the definition of what constitutes waste is not universal.

The department is acutely aware of this problem with data, but says the situation has been gradually improving since national waste reporting was first undertaken in the 1990s.

“This first attempt had little success, mainly because the scope, categories and comprehensiveness of the data collected by each state and territory did not correspond to that in the proposed system and there was little appetite to change,” the department says.

“Data quality and comprehensiveness improved over time, but the differences between these reports meant that trends could not be readily compiled. There were concerns from the states and territories about the transparency of the data transformations used to create a common national platform.”

Read, from the National Waste & Recycling Industry Council, says that better data collection would clearly make planning for the post-China National Sword era much easier and praises the efforts the department is making.

“It is a challenge,” Read says. “One of the projects coming out of the National Waste Policy is to develop a series of national waste accounts. The department is working with the ABS to pull that together.”

The Waste Report 2018 claims considerable progress has been made towards creating a much more robust, consistent and credible data collection system – but admits there are still flaws.

“In general, the quality and quantity of the data on waste tonnages, source streams and materials is improving. Various adjustments to historical data, undertaken in consultation with the states and territories, have improved the trend analysis. It is not possible to calculate margins of error because data arises from multiple sources and is aggregated in different ways by different organisations,” the report says.

Information on the volume of waste going into landfill is unreliable, data collection is often incomplete or inconsistent and the line between different waste streams is often blurred because of inaccurate reporting or double counting by authorities.

“Recycling operators cannot always report the sources of all their materials,” the report concludes.

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PUBLIC EDUCATION, COMMUNITY ANGERSetting ambitious targets to reduce food waste, curb plastic-bag use and implement more effective kerbside collection methods is entirely dependent on the enthusiastic support of the Australian public.

A recent survey of 180 local councils by environmental not-for-profit Planet Ark suggests much more public education is needed to bring about the type of behavioural changes needed if Australia is to recover and recycle more plastics, paper, glass and other valuable materials.

The report says that throwing non-recyclable soft plastics (such as shrink-wrap, bubble wrap and plastic bags) into the recycling bin is still the most common recycling mistake made by Australians – 46 per cent of councils surveyed say too many people are still putting soft plastics into their recycling bins.

In addition, 41 per cent of councils say residents are compounding the problem by putting their recyclable waste into plastic bags before disposing it. Soft plastics clog the sorting machines used by recycling companies.

Recyclable materials in plastic bags are transferred to landfill. All recycling waste should be placed loose in the recycling bin.

Other common mistakes identified by councils include throwing food waste into recycling bins, which contaminates paper and cardboard recycling streams. Nappies, clothing and other non-recyclable plastics, such as meat trays and bottle tops, are also a problem.

The recycling program manager at Planet Ark, Ryan Collins, says that although most Australians do want to recycle, they continue to make the same mistakes because of a lack of clear guidelines.

Planet Ark is campaigning for better recycling labels on household and consumer products. “It’s an evidence-based label that tells you exactly what to do with the different parts of packaging,” he says.

Shmigel describes the kerbside collection of household waste as the Achilles heel of the domestic recycling industry.

“Kerbside recycling is not fully funded,” he says. “The value of the commodity doesn’t pay for all the collection and sorting that follows. So you have to do one of two things, or both: you need to reduce its cost and/or find some new revenue to fund the whole process.”

While changing community attitudes towards recycling at the household level will clearly not fix all of Australia’s long-term recycling problems, Shmigel argues that better waste streaming could ease the pressure on landfills.

The Australian Council of Recycling has developed an app that allows consumers to identify and properly sort their waste so that more material can be recovered. “We definitely need consumers to do a better job and bring down the cost of the system,” Shmigel says.

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46%

of councils surveyed say too many people are still putting soft plastics into their recycling bins.


“There is also concern about tiny plastic microparticles entering food chains, derived from tyres, road markings, paint, clothing fibres, cosmetics and the degradation of larger items”

There is some evidence that public apathy in Australia towards waste and recycling could be changing. Many people are clearly alarmed by media reports about fires at abandoned waste dumps, the cost of food waste and the impact of plastic litter on oceans and marine life.

“Community concern about plastic litter has been galvanised by news about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and photos of dead birds with stomachs full of plastic,” the Department of the Environment and Energy’s National Waste Report 2018 says.

“There is also concern about tiny plastic microparticles entering food chains, derived from tyres, road markings, paint, clothing fibres, cosmetics and the degradation of larger items.”

Mike McConnell, national product manager for Wastech Engineering in Victoria, says that Australian authorities urgently need to launch a public education program so that consumers grasp the importance of correctly streaming their household waste into the correct bins.

“The big issue we have with kerbside recycling is the high level of contamination which is killing systems and making it a lot harder to recycle,” he says. “Contamination makes it much harder to achieve the level of purity that countries like China and India are demanding.”

McConnell says Wastech, an established waste and recycling operator, is excited about the new opportunties for recycling glass and plastics presented by the China National Sword policy, but is concerned by the lack of support from manufacturers and local government in Australia.

“You need to spend a bit of money to put these systems into place to produce materials that can be used in manufacturing,” he says. “So there’s obviously got to be a payback period.”


WHAT ABOUT E-WASTE?Australia is a nation of early technology adopters and this is certainly the case with mobile telephones. Apart from importing about 9.3 million new smartphones a year, we have 25 million old ones in the bottom drawer. Since the average life of a smartphone is about 18 months to two years, the impact on our waste stream is obvious.

In addition to mobile phones, we have a healthy appetite for computers, TVs, printers and accessories – importing about 35 million of them each year. As a result, Australians are the fourth-highest generators of e-waste per capita in the world.

Australians generate 23.6 kilos of e-waste per inhabitant or 574,000 tonnes per annum. By comparison, New Zealanders generate 20.1 kilos of e-waste per inhabitant or 95,000 tonnes per annum.

Rose Read, from the National Waste & Recycling Industry Council, says that although the volume of e-waste generated in Australia is small compared with glass, plastics and paper, e-waste can be extremely hazardous to handle and store.

On the plus side, there is a high demand for the precious metals that can be recovered from old mobile phones and other electronics equipment. Australia exports much of this material to Japan and Korea.

“All of the e-waste generated here is dismantled by the recyclers and sorted into precious metals, ferrous, non-ferrous, plastics, unleaded and leaded glass,” Read says.

“In the past, a lot of the plastics from these devices would have gone to China, but plastic has dropped in price and much of this will now be staying here.”

The recycling rate for metal waste – 90 per cent – is higher than any other waste category in Australia, but the Department of the Environment and Energy is concerned that poor metal prices are putting pressure on the local scrap-metal market – and that too much valuable material is still ending up in landfill.

“Some toxic metals, such as cadmium and cobalt, and rare and precious metals, such as gold and palladium, are still being landfilled in composite material products such as electronic waste,” the department’s National Waste Report 2018 says. “The tonnages are low but the potential environmental impacts and value of the lost resources are high.”

Analysts say that while finding new markets for the plastics and leaded glass recovered from smartphones and computers is a matter of some urgency, the volume of e-waste could be reduced by imposing a recycling charge on the cost of microwaves and fridges.

“There’s a lot of improvement we could make on e-waste,” Shmigel says. “For example, when you buy a computer or TV, there’s a $35 charge built into its cost that guarantees it’s recycled – but when you buy a microwave or fridge there is no charge.”

In addition, little thought seems to have gone into what to do with the mountains of lithium batteries that will be needed to power a new generation of electric vehicles and share bikes.

Shmigel says there is currently no mandatory scheme in place for the recycling of lithium batteries – despite the popularity of electric cars and bikes.

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23.6KG

the amount of e-waste per Australian, equalling 574,000 tonnes per annum.


The Battery Question John Gertsakis, director and co-founder of the Ewaste Watch Institute, on how the country needs at look at the huge problem of battery disposal.

“The question of electric vehicles and battery storage is yet to be effectively addressed in Australia. There is some very good work being done by Sustainability Victoria looking at what the stewardship options are for solar panel systems and battery storage.

“Given the current projections, we are going to see significant volumes of solar panels and associated equipment reaching end of life, but at this point in time there is limited detail on what the electric vehicle/bike industry is doing about its stewardship programs and options for customers.

“While some individual companies provide take-back and recycling services, Australia is still lacking a national, industry-funded stewardship program for batteries, be they for e-vehicles or smaller household batteries.

“Ewaste Watch is calling on the Federal Environment Minister to expand the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme to include all products with a plug or battery and ensure that end-of-life electronics are diverted from landfill and responsibly recycled.

“The reality however, is that recycling alone will not deliver the sustainable outcomes and materials conservation required. Greater attention is needed on product durability, reuse, repair, sharing and productive material-use to turn the tide on ewaste and create circular electronics.”

“That’s really going to be one of the biggest challenges,” he says. “Because as soon as you put one of those batteries into a scrap-metal yard and put heat into the equation, it will literally blow up. So the person putting a share bike onto the street needs to think through the end-of-life implications of this technology.”

Libby Chaplin, CEO of the Battery Stewardship Council (BSC), says that Australia is moving closer towards a voluntary stewardship scheme which will address many of the concerns about e-waste, now and in the future.

“A stewardship scheme is vital if we are to be prepared for the predicted influx in what is essentially a very problematic waste stream,” she says.

A meeting of state and federal ministers recently agreed that the proposed battery stewardship scheme be expanded from handheld batteries to include energy storage and electric vehicle batteries.

Under the BSC proposal, the scheme will be funded by an importer levy of four cents per equivalent battery unit (24 grams) which can then be passed on to the consumer. The levy will cover the cost of managing the scheme and also pay rebates for accredited members.

“This approach would be a game changer as it will enable rapid expansion of the collection network,” says Chaplin.


CONCLUSIONAustralia’s performance in the handling and recycling of its growing volumes of waste is complex and often contradictory. In some areas, such as commercial paper and cardboard recovery, the nation performs very well – but in other areas, such as energy generation from waste, Australia’s performance lags well behind other Western economies.

While growing community agitation is forcing individual businesses to take action to reduce the use of items such as single-use plastic bags, disposable coffee cups and plastic straws, many observers believe the government cannot rely on voluntary industry codes and must take legislative action to create a viable, long-term and sustainable recycling industry in Australia.

Despite the initial shock arising from China’s decision to restrict the volume and quality of waste material it is willing to take from Australia, most of the key players are optimistic about the future – believing that China’s National Sword policy will act as a catalyst for a once-in-a-generation change in public and government attitudes towards waste and recycling.

While Australia is well behind other developed countries when it comes to recycling and disposal rates of food and other organic waste, consumers are slowly starting to understand things need to change. Importantly, the two major political parties are committed to slashing the nation’s overall food waste over the next decade and beyond.

Governments and business are already having to deal with increasing community concerns about the use of plastics and polythene in food packaging. Companies will be expected to provide better recycling labels on household and consumer products.

One area that clearly requires urgent action is the kerbside collection of household waste, which is putting immense pressure on landfill sites across Australia and leading to the stockpiling of vast quantities of plastic, glass, paper and other materials. Exactly how this issue can be resolved, and speedily, remains to be seen.

The looming problem of e-waste caused by the rising popularity of electric cars and bicycles will also need to be addressed. This new generation of clean, green personal transport will almost certainly compound the problems caused by our collective obsession with mobile phones, laptops and other handheld devices.

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INDUSTRY WHITEPAPER - AWRE · outperforming us, including the UK, Norway, Denmark and the United...

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