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.
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
16 June 2021
The NSW Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy 2041: (Stage 1 ā 2021-2027) has endorsed diversion of organic waste from landfill to deliver substantive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from NSW landfills.
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.
Circular Economy
9 April 2021
More and more councils now collect FOGO at the kerbside. Will three bins become the new standard?
Circular Economy
1 March 2021
The single biggest greenhouse gas emissions decision you will make as Mayor, is āAre we still sending organic waste to landfill?ā
Landfill
10 February 2021
MRA welcomes the announcement by the Tasmanian Government on the introduction of a waste levy in Tasmania.
Circular Economy
24 December 2020
Karinne Taylor critically reviews the House Committee on Industry, Innovation, Science and Resources report āFrom Rubbish to Resources: Building a Circular Economyā.
Policy
10 December 2020
Australians want to take care of the environment. We have set a national resource recovery target of 80% by 2030. How do we achieve these goals?
Well, we cannot go wrong with a nationwide landfill levy.
Policy
27 November 2020
Waste is āwasteā by definition of the fact it is discarded. The generator has to pay someone to get rid of it.
Īt will only become a āresourceā when it is separated, sorted, cleaned-up and is available as an input to another process.
Policy
23 November 2020
Landfill levies may be blunt instruments but they have also shown their effectiveness in Australia.
Waste generators have a binary decision to make. Recycle or landfill. More often than not, it comes down to price.
To meet our 80% diversion from landfill target, we need to make the answer to that question simple and ever present.
Circular Economy
2 November 2020
Waste is like a river that flows downhill to the cheapest price. Landfills are like big vacuum cleaners - they suck up waste and resources indiscriminately. If we continue to supply cheaply priced landfills, then that is where our waste will go.
There will always be a place for well-run landfills. But if we want to create a circular economy, then the first and most obvious thing we need to do, is stop the one-way flow into landfills.