Seventy per cent. That’s the target needed to be reached for plastic packaging to be recycled, as set out in the 2017-2022 Strategic Plan for the Australian Packaging Covenant. We are at 16 per cent, with the 2025 target looking unlikely, according to Dr Len Humphreys from biotechnology company Licella.
Let’s start with some statistics. Over 20 per cent of what goes into the red bin could have been recycled, and 75 per cent of waste that should be recycled ends up in landfill. It’s no doubt that the time is now to make a serious change. That is exactly what Giorgio Baracchi and Marco Prayer Galletti set out to do when they launched RecycleSmart in 2019.
At the recent Waste Strategy Summit held in Sydney, Tim Hackett from South Australia wine maker, Henschke, spoke about how the wine industry came together to find solutions to packaging and waste issues.
Getting a modular gasification waste-to-energy (WtE) plant up and running is no easy task. Designed to process residual municipal solid waste, as well as commercial and industrial waste, such a plant takes a lot of time to get up and running. Did we mention time?
Queensland has taken a lot of criticism from various stakeholders due to its landfill levy system. When Campbell Newman was premier he scrapped landfill levies as part of his election promise. However, when Annastacia Palaszczuk was sworn in as premier she decided to reinstate the levy. This did little to appease critics who said they did little to dissuade people to divert waste from landfills.
A civil works contractor has been convicted and fined over environmental offences at a housing development site in the Adelaide Hills.
REMONDIS Australia has released a Sustainability Report that documents its environmental, social and governance achievements and targets within the waste sector.