Government had warning of recycling crisis six years ago, watchdog says

Benjamin Preiss
June 6, 2019
The Age

The Victorian government failed to heed warnings as early as 2013 that China would stop taking recycling waste and did not take action to stop the system plunging into crisis.

Dangerous stockpiles of recycling waste are now sitting in the state and are set to grow, a damning report by Victoria’s Auditor-General says.

Despite the government amassing a $511 million fund dedicated to improving waste management, Auditor-General Andrew Greaves says recyclable waste is still being sent to landfill.

China refused to accept low-grade recycling waste from Australia last year, causing havoc for Victoria’s kerbside recycling system.

There have been at least two massive toxic fires at recycling plants in Melbourne in the past three years, and one of the state’s biggest recycling processors, SKM Recycling, has been repeatedly banned for stockpiling dangerous amounts of rubbish.

The auditor-general said the Environment Department and Sustainability Victoria failed to heed the warning signs in 2013 that China was “changing its approach and that the state’s heavy reliance on exporting recyclables, particularly plastic and paper, left it vulnerable”.

“Recent significant restrictions in the waste export market has brought this issue into sharp focus. This risk was not without early warning,” the report says.

China foreshadowed major restrictions on imported waste in its 2013 “green fence policy”, but the Environment Department failed to anticipate the impact on Victoria’s recycling system, the report found.

It made a number of recommendations, including the publication of clear responsibilities in recycling across government agencies and local councils and reducing reliance on other countries by encouraging new local processing and manufacturing facilities.

A spokeswoman for Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio welcomed the report, saying it would help to reduce landfill and strengthen oversight of the waste sector.

But she rejected suggestions the government had not spent enough on the recycling system.

“We’ve invested a record $135 million in waste and recycling initiatives and will continue to look at how we can transition to a safer, more sustainable waste industry,” she said.

Opposition environment spokesman David Morris slammed the government’s refusal to spend more of the $511 million sitting in the Sustainability Fund to combat the growing crisis.

“It is worse than what we thought it was because it turns out there’s not one element of the system that is working as it should be,” he said.

Mr Morris seized on the report’s assertion that recycling waste data was “incomplete and unreliable”.

He said data collection was crucial because it was not known how much of the recyclable material Victorians put out for collection ended up being processed or just dumped in landfill.

However, Sustainability Victoria said its work had improved the waste sector through investment in new markets for recycled materials and community education.