www.insidewaste.com.au
ISSUE 101 | APR/MAY 2021
INSIDE 30 Landfill 37 What circular economy? 42 Truck feature
Just-in-time model not working Glass achieved a recycling rate of 59 per cent.
Waste production up by 5 million tonnes since 2016-17 Findings cover waste generation, source streams, material categories and fates, together with trends measured back to 2006. While the data precedes the significant investments in recycling and resource recovery the Federal Government has made since the 2019 election, its revised 2016-17 data set (first published in the National Waste Report 2018) will be used as baseline data to measure Australia’s progress against the National Waste Policy Action Plan’s 2030 targets. “This is a great outcome. We can all be proud that our efforts are paying off, to take care of our own waste and to do the right thing by sorting our recycling and diverting more waste away from landfill.” Evans used an interesting analogy when talking about the amount of waste Australians produce each year. “In effect, we each produced waste that weighed the same as 40 full kegs of beer and we each sent the equivalent weight of 24 full kegs to be recycled,” he said. “However, our growing population means that the overall amount of
waste Australia is generating continues to increase, up five million tonnes since 2016-17. “We need to continue to work hard to reduce the amount of waste we create, and to recycle more of it, if we are to achieve Australia’s ambitious national target of recovering 80 per cent of our waste by 2030.” Evans explained that this was the driver behind “unprecedented” action by the government to turbocharge the waste and recycling industries, so that waste is treated as a resource which can be recycled and remanufactured into valuable new products. He said that this protects the environment, creates jobs and keeps waste out of landfill. “Our billion-dollar investment in new recycling infrastructure is changing the face of the waste and recycling industries in Australia,” Evans said. “We are also the first country in the world to ban the export of its unprocessed waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres overseas thanks to our new national recycling legislation.” (Continued on page 22)
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ISSN 1837-5618
BLUE Environment’s National Waste Report 2020, commissioned by the Federal Government’s Department of Agriculture, Waste and the Environment, shows that Australians are reducing their waste and increasing their recycling. Released in December last year, the report is an authoritative compilation of national data on waste and resource recovery and the mechanism for measuring progress against national waste policy targets. “The release of the leading report on waste management and recycling data in Australia, shows that Australians are reducing their waste and increasing their recycling,” Assistant Waste Reduction and Environmental Management Minister Trevor Evans said. It showed that Australia created 3.3 per cent less waste in 2018-19 compared to 2006-07, the foundation year of the national data set. Issued every two years, the 2020 edition focuses on the status of waste and recycling in 2018-19, with data analysed on a per capita basis as well as on state and territory levels.
DURING the recent Australian Circular Economy Conference (ACEC), one of the webinars delved into Food and the Circular Economy in Australia and China. One of the speakers was Alana Mann, associated professor for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) at the University of Sydney. Mann noted that one outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic was that a lot of countries, like China and Australia, were taking a fresh look at how their food systems operated, both in terms of supply chain and food wastage. Mann said it was pleasing to see how both countries, and the world at large, had risen to the challenge of feeding the world’s population during a trying time, but it had also exposed some of the intrinsic weaknesses within some of the systems. “Circular economies and other models of food provisioning including community supported agriculture and cooperatives, are all coming to the fore,” she said. “China is a leader in these areas along with recycling waste and the development of smart technologies for ecommerce. How we connect with consumers and users ensures the supply chains to address food insecurity and also manage issues around waste are addressed, which is an important piece of the circular economy model.” (Continued on page 24)
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