Landfill
21 May 2024
Of the 400 landfills (plus) in NSW only 20 are actively supervised as contaminated sites by the EPA.
FOGO
5 October 2022
As Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) collections are more widely introduced by councils, a uniform approach is required nationally.
FOGO
14 July 2022
Perth, Adelaide, all of Victoria and now all NSW households will have FOGO (Food Organics, Garden Organics) collections by 2030.
FOGO
21 June 2022
Resource recovery in Queensland has lagged other States for a long time because they have had no landfill levy and that has stifled investment.
FOGO
11 April 2022
The NSW EPA recently provided the Waste Advisory Group NSW with an update on the implementation of the Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy 2041 and the Waste Delivery Plan.
Legislation
23 September 2021
The NSW Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy 2041 has ambitious targets to achieve an 80% average recovery rate from all waste streams, triple the plastics recycling rate and halve the amount of organic waste sent to landfill by 2030.
Circular Economy
10 September 2021
Australia generates 316,000 tonnes of HDPE plastic per year. Most is landfilled. If every MGB in Australia was required to be black, that alone would absorb 258,000 t of HDPE by adding 10.4kg of recycled content to every MGB at every home.
Infrastructure
20 July 2021
As of 1 July 2021 resource recovery facilities in Victoria are captured under new Environment Protection Regulations. Facilities that trigger the requirements must apply by October 2021 for a licence or permit or by 2 January 2022 if the activity needs a registration. If you do not make an application, you can no longer operate.
Circular Economy
22 June 2021
From 1 July 2021, all plastic exports will require a licence from the Commonwealth and mixed (unsorted) plastic exports are banned.
Circular Economy
9 April 2021
Federal Environment Minister Susan Ley supports standardised waste collection systems, including a common bin lid colour across Australia. We propose to also standardise the colour of the bin's body to maximise recycled plastic use.
Legislation
9 February 2021
The NSW Department of Planning, Infrastructure and Environment has recently released a series of draft measures aimed at reducing timeframes for State Significant Development Projects and improving the standards of environmental reporting.
Planning & Approvals
13 May 2020
The Federal ban on exports of recyclables requires that over 100 new processing facilities be built to process the 1.3MT of recyclables that we previously exported.
Getting approval for waste facilities can be hard, expensive and time consuming. Esther Hughes provides a few pointers for making the process as painless as possible.