ISSUE 115 | AUG/SEP 2023
28 Regional tyre waste 31 The importance of admin 37 2023 Consultants Registry
Delays don’t stop progress on plastics By Inside Waste
The roadblocks to infrastructure By Inside Waste
He also stated that getting consents and contracts were important, but it can take years, or in rare cases, decades, to get these in place depending on the size and scale of the project. It’s also important to know what the objective is of such infrastructure. It can confuse some, especially as the parameters keep changing. Forty years ago, Carbins said most councils buried and burned waste. Then a little bit of recycling came in. Then more recycling. Then recycling and reuse. He said it was a bit haphazard – a definition of what needs to be achieved should be underlined at the outset of a project. He gave the current situation of FOGO as an example. “Don’t forget that FOGO processing is a manufacturing process for a compost product that will be applied to land,” he said. “That’s the objective. It’s not a waste diversion scheme. It’s a manufacturing objective. It’s not:, ‘let’s get everything and put it in the green bin and hope for the best that we can reduce our landfill’.” (Continued on page 21)
What is the INC? The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee was established as part of the adoption of a resolution known as 5/14, which came out of a United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) meeting in March 2022. The resolution targets the development of an international legally binding document to end plastic pollution. The expectation is that this agreement will be negotiated by countries before the end of 2024. The first session of the INC (INC1) was held in Uruguay, concluding in late 2022. At the conclusion of INC1, the secretariat was asked to prepare a document highlighting possible objectives of the Treaty, as well as substantive matters including control measures, implementation measures as well as core obligations. (Continued on page 24)
PP: 100024538
ISSN 1837-5618
“INVEST in infrastructure,” is one of the catch cries that have been heard over the years in the waste industry. We do have infrastructure – just not enough of it. This is especially so when meeting certain recycling and reuse targets. A government can set such targets, but what can you do if there is not enough infrastructure to meet those them? Or even more worrying, companies are not willing to invest? This and several other questions were asked of a panel at the Waste 2023 Conference held at Coffs Harbour recently. Facilitated by Katherine Driscoll from Impact Environmental Consulting, the panel consisted of Geoffrey Webster, president of WMRR; Chris McLean, partner energy transition, PwC; Phil Carbins, GM business development, Veolia Australia and New Zealand; Susie McBurney, GM NSW/ACT Remondis; and Richie Farrell, head of investor relations, Cleanaway. Webster said that while there is a lot of new infrastructure in the pipeline, gaps still need filling, with the most obvious being plastics.
“We don’t have the production capability to deal with some of these products,” he said. “REDcycle – great initiative. The idea was great, but nowhere for the materials to go. Unless we can sort out some of those key fundamentals – get support from government and industry, as well as everyone working together in those sorts of spaces – then it makes life really hard.” When it came to red tape Carbins compared Brisbane versus Sydney with the former only having one council to deal instead of having several local bodies. He also said guaranteeing feedstock was important for those looking to invest in such places. “Imagine what you could do if you could guarantee feedstock to a service provider to provide the infrastructure based on said feedstock – for your FOGO bin, your recycling bin, your residual waste bin over a long period,” he said. “This is one of the pillars of success of a project for it to be delivered. You need policy and regulation settings that are fundamental to anything we do.”
NEARLY 1,700 participants from almost 170 UN member states, as well as representatives from more than 300 civil society organisations, academia and industry converged on UNESCO in Paris in late May to progress the preparation of the Treaty to End Plastic Pollution. In addition to Australian government delegates, observers from Australia were out in force, with AMCS, Earthwatch, Engineers Australia, Friends of the Earth, Minderoo Foundation, No More Butts and WWF all having representation on the ground. Despite two days of delays, delegates were able to move discussions along and end the session with a mandate to prepare a draft of the Plastics Treaty
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