The State of Waste in 2024
By: Mike Ritchie, MRA Consulting Group

Waste sector magazines are full of news about individual companies innovating, developing and introducing new initiatives and as an industry we should be very proud of that.
But is this innovation making much of a difference compared to the challenges we face? Not much if truth be told.
At best we are holding our own against a flood of waste, rising industrial emissions and stagnating recycling rates.
Why?
Because governments are not innovating at the same rate that private companies are. In fact, governments across Australia are seriously lagging the demands of industry for reform.
How many parliamentary inquiries do we need to have before we will see some serious structural reform in the waste/recycling/CE space.
How many government “discussion papers” do we need to read, full of “motherhood and apple pie” statements of intent, but with no substance and no actionable reform.
Here are some basic facts which every Minister should be aware of:
- No government will achieve the National Waste Targets for 2030 based on current policy settings:
- 80% diversion from landfill
- 50% reduction in organics to landfill
- 10% reduction in per capita waste generation.
- South Australia will go the closest with its C&D sector and possibly C&I achieving the 80% diversion figure.
- WA may go close with MSW as the new incinerators fire up. (Yes, that is diversion from landfill and is counted in the 80%).
- NSW will go close with its C&D sector again for the 80% but upcoming limitations on the use of recovered fines will likely set that back.
- No government will achieve the 50% reduction in organics to landfill.
- No government will reduce the flow of waste by actually reducing per capita waste generation. In fact, since the 2019 announcement of the National Waste Policy, per capita waste generation has grown by 2% (rather than falling by 10%).
- Recycling rates have stagnated at 60% of waste generation for at least 5 years. Why? Because the economic incentives to be able to grab the last 20% are just not there. Recyclers will lose money trying to get businesses and households to separate these streams, markets are weak, costs are too high, and efficiency of recovery is too low. There is no economic case for building C&I sorting facilities, and sorting MSW is so far loss making.
The challenge is for governments to get back onto the reform bus.
There have been some rays of sunshine, so rather than be too critical, let’s start with some positives:
- Levy – QLD, VIC and TAS have announced further increases in the landfill levy in real terms.
- That creates the economic environment for investment.Â
- They encourage waste generators to think about source separation of materials into recycling and landfill.Â
- They stimulate the investment in secondary reprocessing of mixed waste streams such as C&D (and hopefully C&I soon).
- While the levies in Australia are still not high enough to stimulate C&I sorting facilities to be built, they have crossed the threshold for C&D sorting (which is why we have so many C&D recycling plants popping up and why the C&D recovery rate is topping 80%).Â
- While hypothecation is a perennial fight regarding levy funds, that is a secondary issue to the price signal levies put into the market.
- We need higher levies while higher hypothecation rates would be an additional bonus.
- Organics – many governments have mandated 3 bin FOGO for household waste. That is a good start, but it is not enough.
- The recovery rate for MSW food is still around only 60% compared to 90% plus for garden waste.
- NSW has required large businesses to separate their commercial food (commences July 2025), which is a really positive start. Other States need to follow quickly.
- EfW – WA has two shiny new incinerators coming online. Hopefully they will show the Australian community that incineration is a viable and responsible alternative for the disposal of truly residual waste. And I mean residual waste after the recyclables have been extracted including all organics. So, 3 bin systems (recycling, FOGO and MSW) plus additional pre-sorting, should be mandatory precursors of incineration.
- Incineration is a significant greenhouse abatement activity because it replaces coal fired electricity (and heat) and to the extent they burn residual organics (wood, pallets, timber, rubber) they are carbon neutral (and negative relative to landfill).Â
- So, the less we landfill organics, the better for the planet. Compost or AD what you can and incinerate the rest. Keep it out of landfill.
If we are going to achieve the National Waste Targets, we will need to recover an additional 18 million tonnes per year, on top of the 40 MT we are recycling now. That is a massive increase. We will not do it as business as usual.
Already we are 11 MT behind the target and that gap will grow with population growth and per capita consumption growth between now and 2030.
Put simply we are treading water at best and going backwards at worst.
The thing that really upsets me about the slowness of reform is the missed opportunities for cheap and easy emissions abatement.
We are sleepwalking towards climate chaos.
The waste/recycling/CE sector offers enormous greenhouse gas abatement opportunities that are largely unrecognised. Go to most greenhouse reports and you will see that “waste” represents 3% of Australia’s emissions. For that reason, it is largely ignored.
But what those direct emissions don’t tell you is that the waste sector can reduce EVERYBODY else’s emissions.
The embodied energy stored in an aluminium can, a car body, a plastic bottle, cardboard etc all contribute to reducing the emissions in the industrial sector (not the “waste” sector). These savings go unmeasured.
It frustrates me senseless.
The sector can abate at least 40MT of CO2-e emissions easily via a few simple actions. That is 10% of Australia’s total emissions. And yet we ignore it.
We have not put the policies in place to drive rapid reform. And yet we know how to do it, it is cheap abatement, and it aligns with our targets for waste.
What do we need to do:
- Stop landfilling organics (10MT of current emissions)
- Capture all of the gas from landfills (11MT of legacy emissions per year)
- EfW of residual waste – offsetting at least 10 MT of coal emissions
- Embodied energy – through better recycling (10 MT at least)
- Circular economy – savings in manufacture (gazillions of tonnes; currently unmeasured)
- Sequestration – of compost and biochar in soil (estimated 100 MT /yr or higher).
We have not even touched the sides.
Our policy makers have not realised the potential or seen the jobs and abatement opportunities. It is sad.
They are throwing money at carbon capture and storage when we know a better way to capture emissions and store them. It is called plantations with biochar into soil. It works. It can be scaled up. Do we have any R&D projects underway to test the economics? Not one.
The reform process is so slow as to be anaemic.
What do all governments need to do (and this is a minimalist list):
Investment
- Increase the levy in real terms and forward announce those increases
- Hypothecate more levy funds to stimulate infrastructure investment
- Release infrastructure Plans to guide investmentÂ
- Take the levy and grants to a level that releases investment in C&I sorting (there are only two small sorting facilities in Australia)
Organics
- Mandate 3 bin FOGO asap and harmonise (including in terms of what can go into bins) countrywide
- Mandate Commercial Food (COFO) separation
- Ban organics to landfill (including cardboard, pallets and wood)
- Set new minimum standards for FOGO contamination
Landfills
- Mandate gas capture and flaring at all landfills above say 5kt CO2-e/yr emissions
- Set minimum standards for all landfills including application of the levies (on all landfills)
Markets
- Review the export bans to make them export material quality standards (we need the overseas markets for our recyclate)
- Set higher minimum quality standards for FOGO compost (they currently allow 0.5% plastic contamination) so we don’t wreck the existing markets with contaminated materials
- Accelerate R&D funding for new product and process development to grow domestic markets
Recycling
- Standardise acceptable materials into the yellow bin
- Adopt national packaging rules including a national mandatory EPR scheme, eco-modulated levy and bans on non-recyclable materials
- Invest in market development for reprocessing domestically
- Increase the Container Deposit rebates to at least 20c and include wine and spirits
- Convert all of the 106 EPR schemes to mandatory so that we reduce the free-rider problems plaguing voluntary schemes
- Mandate EPR on new materials (such as mattresses, textiles, end of life vehicles, lithium batteries etc)
Circular Economy
- Legislate the “right to repair” as a bare minimum
- Develop a CE plan that has merit (not just motherhood statements)
- Require re-useÂ
- Drive down per capita consumption growth via mandatory CE initiatives
It is not hard to do but it does require government Ministers to tell their departments that they want reform. It requires us to tell governments (loudly) that we expect real reform. It will not happen by osmosis or business as usual.
Mike Ritchie is the Managing Director at MRA Consulting Group.
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