Latest articles

With the Emissions Reduction Fund passing the Senate, industry can expect a 15-fold increase in scale of emissions reductions projects. The Emissions Reduction Fund is national scheme which provides $2.55 billion over three years to purchase emissions reductions. This $2.55 billion is budgeted to cover 2014-15 to 2017-18. Based on the average budget expenditure, this […]

The most cost effective way to recover food and green waste, which account for more than 60% of an average household’s garbage bin, is via a three bin system with food and green waste (FOGO) in the same bin… but should nappy waste be included the mix? About 15 councils across Australia currently run FOGO […]

Australians are the best household recyclers in the world. Our domestic kerbside recycling rates are second to none. But even so, we still put about 15-30% of all recyclables into the wrong bin. That is, into the garbage bin instead of the recycling bin. By Mike Ritchie. In NSW, this loss of recyclables accounts for […]

The first round of Waste Less Recycle More infrastructure grants came to a close in early March, with consultants and applicants alike breathing a sigh of relief as schedules, cost benefit analyses and application forms were submitted to the Environmental Trust for appraisal. The opportunities promised by the WLRM package are immense. Traditional waste service […]

Victoria’s Metropolitan Waste Management Group (MWMG) has a new name to reflect its expanded role as part of an amendment to the Environment Protection Act, which also led to the amalgamation of regional waste groups. The amendment, effective from August 1, means that the group’s role will now cover all waste streams, adding commercial and […]

Community engagement and the waste hierarchy were the running themes of the 2014 Energy from Waste Symposium held in Lorne, Victoria last week. According to NSW EPA director waste and resource recovery strategy Steve Beaman, those who attended the Waste Management Association of Australia (WMAA) event were already energy-from-waste “evangelists” who agreed with the direction […]

The Waste Management Association of Australia (WMAA) has released a brief document on the intricacies of the carbon policy and how it might affect the sector. Produced by Norton Rose Fulbright, MRA Consulting Group, Transpacific Industries Group and Cleanaway and Blue Environment, the fact sheet focuses on current issues amid the policy turbulence and uncertainties […]

When it comes to pricing carbon from waste you would be excused if you find it hard to tell the truth from the erroneous. It is pretty easy to miss the big picture behind the headline-grabbing estimate or to just feel lost because you went away for a few days! With our most recent article […]

At the time of writing the Government’s CPM termination bills have passed the House of Reps and are progressing to the Senate. They will most probably see the fixed carbon price repealed and replaced by Direct Action and the Emission Reduction Fund (ERF). The ERF provides the funding and the methodologies to project proponents to […]

Where are we today, and what will be game changing in resource recovery? First, the facts. Australia generates 48 MT/year of waste (latest National Waste Data Report 2014). Despite steady increases in the rate of recovery (average 52%), the waste generated between 2002 and 2009 grew by 40%, while population increased by only 10% (SoE […]

The Australian waste industry is a rapidly changing space, with surging waste volumes and new government policies creating both opportunities and challenges. Improving the efficiency of collection, transport and recovery of waste and recyclables is critical to maximising resource recovery, a critical factor in the environmental footprint of our economy. But waste generation has been […]

In 2012, in an article published in the WME online blog, MRA wrote: “Here we are at the end of a 6-year negotiation that began with the CPRS and NGERS and has finished with the Carbon Pricing Mechanism (CPM) and the Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI)”. We all thought this was the end of the theoretical […]