Waste

If you are dealing with asbestos waste in NSW, take notice. The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal has handed down a decision which confirms that any waste containing asbestos is asbestos waste endorsing all of the EPA interpretations of the POEO Act.

If you are dealing with recyclables and have $100 million annual revenue, the Act applies to you as of January 2019

MRA’s Mike Ritchie was featured on the cover of Waste Management Review having been interviewed on the waste sector’s contribution to national emissions and its role in meeting Australia’s commitment to the Paris Agreement.

Mike Ritchie attended the 2019 Australian Landfills and Transfer Stations Conference and delivered a presentation on how differences in legislation, targets and data between states is hindering resource recovery in Australia.

It has now been over a year since China introduced its National Sword policy to restrict the importation of kerbside recyclable materials from the rest of the world. The purpose of the policy was to increase the recovery of domestically generated recyclables within China and further boost its own manufacturing. The new rule is a 0.5% contamination rate in Australian exported material. Few Australian Materials Recovery Facilities (MRF) were built for that level of purity.

With landfill levies in NSW at $140.20/t you would think that sorting of commercial waste would be more common than it is. Less than 5% of the Commercial and Industrial (C&I) waste in NSW is put through a processing plant to recover the valuable materials. In other words, less than 120,000t of the 5.5 MT that is generated is put through a processing plant. There are no dedicated C&I sorting facilities in other States (and landfill levies are lower).

MRA is actively engaging in the waste management debate and this week has seen two of our own being extensively quoted on national newspapers. The Financial Review has reported on MRA's submission to the ACCC on the proposed merging of Bingo and DADI, quoting Mike Ritchie on the expected positive outcomes of the merger in terms of improved recovery rates for C&I waste in Sydney.

According to the 2016 National Waste Report, Commercial and Industrial waste (C&I) represents 20 MT of the 53 MT of waste generated in Australia (or 40% of generation). It also represents 34% of all waste sent to landfill (or 7.2MT out of 21MT) and achieves a 64% recovery rate compared to C&D (64%) and MSW (51%). Not bad in the scheme of things.

By MRA Consulting Group On the morning of Thursday August 30, Mike will be moderating a panel discussing the changing environment faced by the Australian waste industry. The discussion will focus on China’s National Sword, NSW ‘Return and Earn’ CDS, Queensland’s forthcoming landfill levy and the options and opportunities available to local government and waste […]

Waste and recycling reform is on the move. The Federal Government has announced it will revive the National Waste Strategy by the end of 2018. As part of the discussion on strategic direction I thought it would be useful to go back and revisit a previous strategic review and see what we have achieved (or not) in NSW. To put it another way, while there is a lot of movement at present, is the movement achieving the main priorities?

MRA's Mike Ritchie was very pleased to have been invited to contribute to the Environmental Professionals Forum's (EPF) UnEaten Matters evening on the 8th of August. Mike moderated a panel of professionals to discuss the complexities of food waste.

Following Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s announcement back in March 20th, the Queensland Government released for public consultation a directions paper on the State’s recycling and waste industry.