You wouldn’t normally expect international trade agreements to have a direct impact on the local government sector, but China’s National Sword program, which has restricted the importation of recyclable material since 1 January 2018, has hit many councils squarely in the Rs—the Rubbish part of their Rates, Roads and Rubbish portfolio, to be precise.
With China being the largest importer of recyclable products from Australia, this policy is having a significant impact on the options available for the management of recycled material. It’s not just a case of finding somewhere else to send this material, because the whole western world is in the same boat, so to speak, and there is no other market that can absorb the waste stream that China previously accepted.
In the simplest of terms, with the withdrawal of China from the market, the cost of processing recyclable materials is set to double or even triple (up from around $40/tonne to as much as $120/tonne, perhaps more as the market tightens). With the average Australian household reportedly generating around 1.6 tonnes of recyclable waste each year, this equates to a waste processing cost increase of around $130 per household. And for most of us, that will show up in the bottom line on a rates notice coming soon to a letterbox near you.
But even this is not the whole story. Major recycling organisations such as Visy, the middle men in the process, are withdrawing entirely in some sectors because there is currently no viable market for the recyclables they previously accepted, leaving the collectors of waste, which includes many local councils, with a mounting (mounding?) problem. For the ‘glass half full’ people out there, we have an incredible opportunity for a creative entrepreneur…
The Container Deposit Scheme, although it’s hardly a new idea, is certainly a step in the right direction when it comes to litter control, but it’s actually a bit of a double-edged sword. Removing those items from the general waste stream actually complicates the recyclables picture because it decreases the value of the remaining [recyclable] waste, making it even more expensive for councils to deal with. And, of course, the CDS just provides another path to the endpoint, not a new endpoint.
So, if it wasn’t already, it may now be a little more obvious why TV programs like the ABC’s War on Waste are being plugged so heavily of late, and why single use plastic products are currently in the spotlight. After all, in the world of waste, Recycle is actually the last of the three Rs—it comes only after we have Reduced our consumption of products that end up in the waste stream and Reused as much as we can.
This whole issue, however, is still very much a ‘work in progress’. In the mean time, apart from reducing the consumption of single use items in general, we can all help the recycling effort by keeping recycled waste streams as free of contamination [by non-recyclable items] as possible—use the different coloured [lid] bins only as directed. Contaminated recyclables can’t be processed and just end up in landfill via a somewhat circuitous and more expensive route.