Page 573 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012
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separation has captured less than 50 per cent of the household organics in trials in South Australia and internationally.
The Greens have frequently raised the Goulburn “city to soil” trial of household organics collection as a model for best practice. The New South Wales government’s review of this trial found it was capturing just 18 per cent of the households’ total organic waste—that is right: only 18 per cent. By contrast, the Hyder report commissioned by the government suggests that a residual waste materials recovery facility would recover over 80 per cent of household organics, as well as other materials that have been incorrectly binned, such as valuable glass and aluminium going into the general waste bin.
Hyder also found that a residual waste MRF has the lowest carbon footprint of the options considered and would have approximately half the cost of an organic waste collection service. However, the ACT’s waste management strategy does not focus exclusively on waste infrastructure requirements. Rather, it explicitly puts reduced waste generation, supported by awareness raising, education and community action, as its first objective and first strategy respectively.
On this one thing I think we can agree: education can be an effective low-cost strategy in reducing waste production and improving recovery rates. That is why education is the central part of the strategy. The education scenario referred to by Ms Le Couteur and modelled by Hyder was a direct response to a request by the Labor government to examine the possible effectiveness of expanded education initiatives. It is important to note that the Hyder report states that the education scenario “consists of the business as usual kerbside collection services combined with an intensive community education and engagement program to achieve aggressive waste reduction targets across all waste categories over a period of four years”. It is not linked to a third bin solution.
If these targets from education and business as usual alone could be achieved, they would provide the most cost-effective reductions in waste generation. However, what Hyder calls these “aggressive” waste reduction targets would reduce waste to landfill by less than 10 per cent of the total. So the education option, combined with business as usual, would achieve less than 10 per cent of the total waste stream being diverted from landfill, rather than 23 per cent of the household waste stream. The government needs to take a holistic approach to the ACT’s waste management system rather than focusing exclusively on actions targeting the household sector.
To meet the government’s ambitious targets for resource recovery and to achieve sustainable resource management, education alone will not be enough. A suite of actions will be required, including improvements to waste infrastructure. These are outlined in the strategy. The government is already moving forward with the commercial MRF, which by 2014 will help to divert up to 40 per cent of commercial and industrial waste from landfill each year. Any decision on a residual MRF will be made after that time and based on an analysis of opportunities and costs at that time.
This is not to say that the government is focused only on infrastructure. The government continues to remain a leader in best practice waste education. For
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