FEATURE NEWS
Residual remedy
THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A ZERO-WASTE SOCIETY. THERE WILL ALWAYS BE RESIDUALS THAT CAN’T BE REUSED, RECYCLED, OR RECOVERED. SO, WHAT DO WE DO WITH THEM?
Mandatory commercial collection service for any business that generates large amounts of food waste should be on the national agenda according to MRA Consulting’s Mike Ritchie.
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he future of Australia’s waste resource recovery industry is facing a critical moment as the country struggles to address the increasing amount of residual waste being sent to landfills. According to Rick Ralph, Chief Executive Officer of the National Waste and Recycling Industry Council, it’s time to change the narrative. “It’s not about waste. It’s about the residuals from recycling and other processes that need to be managed,” he says. “As the population increases our reliance on what we use also increases. So regardless of what we’re trying to do in recycling, and processing, we’re still outstripping ourselves in our purchasing and what we’re using.
“As a result, we can have all the recycling in the world but we’re still going to have residuals that we have to get rid of.” Speaking at a session at this year’s Australasian Waste and Recycling Expo that aimed to address the challenges of managing residual waste streams, explore solutions, and the need for effective nationwide policies and regulations, Rick said government needs to be held accountable for how residuals will be disposed of. Australia’s Federal, State, and local governments have agreed to national waste targets including 80 per cent diversion from landfill by 2030 and a 50 per cent reduction in organic waste to landfill in the same time frame.
That leaves 20 per cent of Australia’s waste – or residuals – that need to be disposed of. But there’s no clear direction on how that will happen. Mike Ritchie, Managing Director of MRA Consulting Group, says Australia has a residuals disposal problem, in spite of the work around recycling. In 1996, Australia generated about 22 million tonnes of waste and almost all of it was landfilled. The recycling rate was just seven per cent. Today the recycling rate has increased to 60 per cent, but that must now hit 80 per cent in seven years. At the same time, landfill is still growing because of population growth and per capita consumption. Mike says, New South Wales will run out of inert landfilling by 2028 and putrescible landfill in 2036, according to the government’s own forecasts, unless something is done. “Doing something requires us to do a lot more than with the policy settings that we have today,” he says. “Government set these targets, it needs to deliver us a plan that allows us to know what to invest in. Environment ministers from each state need a plan that says, this is how many resource recovery facilities we need, we need so many composting plants, and this is where they need to be. “We cannot create a zero-waste society and the sooner we front that, the better because we need disposal facilities. There will come a day very soon, when the last tonne of waste has nowhere to go.” www.wastemanagementreview.com.au / WMR / 7