Recycling

If you haven’t heard it already, the household recycling industry is in all sorts of trouble. 2018 is going to be a troubled year for most MRFs (Materials Recovery Facilities) and therefore their council clients. The Chinese National Sword policy has bitten and bitten hard. National Sword is the Chinese government’s mechanism to restrict import licences for recycled product and limit contamination rates of those recyclables to less than 0.5%.

The Albury Waste Management Centre (AWMC) includes the fourth largest landfill in NSW, and now the centrepiece of Halve Waste, the most successful waste reduction program in Australia. The Halve Waste Initiative has recently been awarded the best organics recovery program in NSW and the best local government initiative in sustainability.

Australia’s recycling sector is primed for continued growth. It must in order to keep up with waste generation, which is growing at a compound annual rate of 6.2%, that is 6x population growth and 2.5x economic growth. The market is there, and it is being serviced through a combination of regulatory intervention and technological innovation.

The waste and recycling industry is, sadly, becoming known for its large blazes. This is not to suggest that Australian recycling facilities are badly run. They are not. It is, however, a sector that is at risk from fires.

By Mike Ritchie, MRA Consulting Group Our waste problems are urgent. Waste is pouring out of the economy at 6.3% compound average growth rate. Waste volumes double every 12 years. Most Australian States and Territories have set recycling targets for 2020/21. For MSW the diversion target is generally 65-70% (except in the ACT where it’s […]

By James Moverley, MRA Consulting Group Three bin waste systems are becoming the norm in many regions of Australia. Melbourne and Adelaide have moved quickly to standardise 3 bin systems for Food Organics and Green Organics (FOGO) services. The NSW government has funded 3 bin systems across NSW, with the biggest uptake of the NSW […]

By James Ellinson and Dimitris Dimoliatis, MRA Consulting Group Re-use centres are a small, yet growing industry in Australia that offer a unique opportunity to tackle more than just waste. These facilities also engage in job outreach programs for disadvantaged communities, particularly for people with disabilities. Re-use centres sell used, recycled and second hand products […]

By Mike Ritchie – Director, MRA Consulting Group Plastic pollution of waterways and oceans is a real problem. We need to fix it. Plastic was only invented 100 years ago and now is ubiquitous in our economies and lifestyles. It is also ubiquitous in our pollution. From microbeads to plastic bottles and fish nets plastic […]

The Albury Wodonga region is the best in both NSW and Victoria for household recycling. That’s according to a recent audit of kerbside household waste, which shows that total diversion rates of the four councils that introduced a combined food and garden organics service this year was 82% on average. The councils that achieved this […]

The rollout of new food and garden (FOGO) waste collection systems is stressful for many councils. MyWaste shows it does not need to be. For many residents, wheeling out and collecting their bins each week represents their most significant interaction with Council. This is a learned behaviour established over many years. Subsequently, changes to collection […]

MRA has wrapped up its 2014-2015 ‘Bin Trim Business Grants’ project, which is part of the NSW Government Waste Less Recycle More $465.7 million program. Along with 26 other Bin Trim providers, we have visited 8,000+ small to medium enterprises (SME) across NSW. SMEs are responsible for 45 per cent of commercial and industrial (C&I) […]

A recent case in the NSW Land and Environment Court has highlighted the discord between NSW’s planning laws and the environmental protection laws, which could impact the way that waste and recycling processers are approved and regulated. After much advocacy by the waste and recycling sectors, the Government in 2007 introduced the State Environmental Planning […]