National Waste Report 2026: Household recycling
The National waste and resource recovery report 2026 was just published. Here's what you need to know.
By Mike Ritchie, Director, MRA Consulting Group
The latest National Waste Report again shows households are the laggards when it comes to recycling in Australia.
Only 50% of household waste is recycled compared to 60% for commercial and 83% for construction waste.
While households generate only 18% of Australian waste, they represent 27% of the waste sent to landfill.
The reasons are simple:
- About 30% of all recyclables are placed in the garbage bin instead of the yellow lid bin.
- (It’s fair to wonder why we make household recycling so hard)
- Food and Garden (FOGO) is not mandatory in many States and while mandated in NSW, it won’t start until 2030. We landfill the vast bulk of household food waste.
- Bulky waste (beds, furniture etc) is difficult to recycle economically, so most is still landfilled. It is cheaper for councils to landfill it than to sort it. The metal is usually pinched from the kerb because it is the only material worth enough to bother collecting.
- Extended Producer Responsibility schemes are almost all voluntary and therefore have tragically poor recovery rates (think mattresses, child car seats, packaging, mobile phones etc).
- There are 106 such schemes in Australia and only the container deposit schemes and motor oil schemes are mandatory.
- The mandatory schemes have an average 70% capture rate while the voluntary schemes have an average capture rate of 4%.
Unless governments step up, these trends will continue.
One source of funds, waste levies, now raise $2.4B (yes Billion) for State Governments per year.
Let’s put the levies to their proper purpose – to fund resource recovery and recycling.
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Mike Ritchie is the Managing Director at MRA Consulting Group.
