Speaker 1: Hey there, Ruby Jones here every day on seven am.
Speaker 1: This week we're bringing you a long form story from
Speaker 1: the monthly, read by the person who wrote it. Today
Speaker 1: we have author and critic James Bradley reading his piece
Speaker 1: The Tipping Point. In it, he visits one of the
Speaker 1: country's largest landfill sites to understand the dangers in how
Speaker 1: we dispose of the millions of tons of waste that
Speaker 1: we create. In confronting something we often seek to avoid,
Speaker 1: the enormous waste of our modern lives, James examines the
Speaker 1: nature of private consumption, its effects on the environment, and
Speaker 1: the lack of accountability baked into the system. It's a
Speaker 1: riveting piece. Enjoy It's Thursday, January nine.
Speaker 2: The Tipping Point. It's a bitterly cold day in July
Speaker 2: when I arrive at Cleanaway's Lucas Heights Resource Recovery Park
Speaker 2: on Sydney's southern Edge. Standing in the car park, I
Speaker 2: stare at the huge hill that rises up behind it.
Speaker 2: Its sides a scree of pale rock and dirt. Thick
Speaker 2: black pipes snake here and there across its surface like
Speaker 2: some outside watering system, while several hundred meters away, just
Speaker 2: over the crest of the hill. Heavy vehicles are bumping
Speaker 2: back and forth, their business concealed by mounds of earth.
Speaker 2: The hill is the Lucas Heights Landfill. Locked away beneath
Speaker 2: its surface are tens of millions of tons of compacted garbage.
Speaker 2: A decomposing mass of rubbish twenty five meters high, perhaps
Speaker 2: a clomet along and not much less wide from here
Speaker 2: that seems difficult to credit. Apart from the dozens of
Speaker 2: ravens screeching overhead, there is little to suggest the presence
Speaker 2: of so much waste. No smell, no tottering piles of rubbish. Instead,
Speaker 2: it looks more like a mine or a building site.
Speaker 2: Inside the office beside the car park, I am introduced
Speaker 2: to the landfill manager, Elsie Chaiang. He is a slim
Speaker 2: man in his fifties, with the aura of thoughtful calm.
Speaker 2: I usually associate with somebody whose work involves taking time
Speaker 2: over things, an artisan or a farmer. Perhaps. Chiang started
Speaker 2: his career and waste in Hong Kong and began at
Speaker 2: Lucas Heights after moving to Australia in twenty eleven. While
Speaker 2: I put on my hard hat and florovest, he talks
Speaker 2: me through the facility's operations. Originally set up in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty seven after the closure of the old Lucas Heights landfill,
Speaker 2: it takes garbage from councils and businesses all over Southern Sydney,
Speaker 2: excepting not just the rubbish wheels stick in our red
Speaker 2: bins every week, but huge volumes of construction and commercial waste.
Speaker 2: This is borne in by a steady stream of trucks.
Speaker 2: As Chiang is speaking to me, several pass through the
Speaker 2: gate outside the window, which wind their way up the
Speaker 2: hill towards the active area are glimpsed from the car park.
Speaker 2: These trucks deliver around three thousand tons of rubbish day,
Speaker 2: or close to a million tons a year. Handling all
Speaker 2: that waste requires a lot of engineering. Modern landfills aren't
Speaker 2: just holes in the ground full of garbage. Their extremely
Speaker 2: sophisticated industrial operations subject to strict environmental controls. Here at
Speaker 2: Lucas Heights, for instance, the base of the landfall is
Speaker 2: lined with a two point five millimeter membrane of high
Speaker 2: density polyethylene, similar to the material used in plastic pipes
Speaker 2: and bottles, over almost a meter of clay. This liner
Speaker 2: is designed to prevent the highly toxic liquid that leaches
Speaker 2: out of the waste from contamining groundwater or migrating into
Speaker 2: rivers and creeks. The top is also covered first with
Speaker 2: a three hundred millimeter thick intermediate deposit of rubble and dirt,
Speaker 2: and then, once the area has settled, a final layer
Speaker 2: of one point seven meters of soil, which will eventually
Speaker 2: be remediated into parkland or bush Even the active part
Speaker 2: of the landfill, known as the face, is carefully managed
Speaker 2: and circled on every side with netting to catch anything
Speaker 2: that might blow away. Some sense of what that actually
Speaker 2: means can be gleaned from the diagram of the facility
Speaker 2: that's positioned on a stand in the office. Seen from above.
Speaker 2: The site is a bit over two kilometers from end
Speaker 2: to end and about half that across, and a regular
Speaker 2: oval nestled in the middle of thick bushland. The active
Speaker 2: part of the facility is in the middle. At the
Speaker 2: southern end, a patch of green marks out the parts
Speaker 2: of the landfill that have been permanently covered and are
Speaker 2: being rehabilitated into parkland or Near the northern perimeter, a
Speaker 2: huge pit that will eventually be filled with garbages being
Speaker 2: prepared for lining. There is something more inspiring about the
Speaker 2: shear's scale of it, especially when one considers that Lucas
Speaker 2: Heights isn't the only facility like this in Sydney. Bingo's
Speaker 2: Eastern Creek landfill is even bigger, says Theolia's Woodlawn Echo
Speaker 2: Precinct near Canberra, which also accepts a lot of Sydney's waste,
Speaker 2: and they in turn are also only three of the
Speaker 2: almost thirteen hundred landfills scattered around the country. This isn't
Speaker 2: just garbage. This is garbage's geological force, a tide of
Speaker 2: rubbish so huge it almost defies comprehension. Most of us
Speaker 2: don't think about waste all that often, and when we do,
Speaker 2: it's usually with discomfort and embarrassment. Waste is shunted to
Speaker 2: the margins of our consciousness, both metaphorically and in a
Speaker 2: much more literal sense, ending up being shipped away to
Speaker 2: the outskirts of our cities and towns, and that goes
Speaker 2: double for landfill. Although many people get a warm glow
Speaker 2: out of recycling in the other forms of resource recovery,
Speaker 2: landfill is different. That's where the other stuff goes. The
Speaker 2: stuff we can't or more accurately, choose not to recover,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of that stuff. Australia generates around
Speaker 2: seventy six million tons of waste a year, while a
Speaker 2: bitter over sixty fears center that is recycled or recovered
Speaker 2: in some way Close to a third. More than twenty
Speaker 2: three million tons, almost a ton for every person in
Speaker 2: the country ends up in landfill. About thirty percent of
Speaker 2: this waste is organic material, food waste, garden waste, timber,
Speaker 2: and other items, but it also incorporates large amounts of
Speaker 2: cardboard and paper, plastic, metal, building materials, glass, and soil
Speaker 2: contaminated with asbestos, chemicals or other hazardous wastes. As we
Speaker 2: wind up around the mound in a ute, Chiang points
Speaker 2: out the jetsons like structure of the Lucas Heights Nuclear reactor,
Speaker 2: a complometer or so to the east. The southern half
Speaker 2: of the landfill is inside the exclusion zone that surrounds
Speaker 2: the reactor, a conjunction that seems almost too neat. When
Speaker 2: I ask Chiang whether that worries him, he replies that
Speaker 2: it's a good thing because it means there's no chance
Speaker 2: of the land around that part of the facility being
Speaker 2: zoned for housing. On the western slope, where the mound
Speaker 2: has been covered over and the ground drops away towards
Speaker 2: the bush land that surrounds the facility, grass grows, giving
Speaker 2: the space a bucolic feel. It is only slightly diminished
Speaker 2: by the network of snaking pipes. At the top of
Speaker 2: the mound. We stop and climb out. Birds swirl overhead,
Speaker 2: hundreds of ravens, as well as great flocks of ibis
Speaker 2: moving in formation, seagulls and dozens of pelicans, all honking
Speaker 2: and shrieking as they fight for space to land amid
Speaker 2: the trucks in front of us, A line of orange
Speaker 2: flags and a black pipe mark the boundary of the grass.
Speaker 2: Beyond them, the ground drops away into a shallow depression
Speaker 2: where huge trucks and bulldozers grind up and down through,
Speaker 2: spilling piles of garbage. At one end, trucks are off
Speaker 2: loading bags and bags of rubbish, pouring out in great mounds.
Speaker 2: Once they've done that, one of several bulldozers bumps in
Speaker 2: and starts spreading it out, and finally, a massive, long
Speaker 2: bodied vehicle with sawtoothed wheels two or three meters in diameter,
Speaker 2: looking like it would be more at home in mad
Speaker 2: Macs grinds over the top the points on its wheels
Speaker 2: to compact the waste. While we stare at the trucks,
Speaker 2: I try to make notes about the profusion of stuff
Speaker 2: spread out in front of me. There is almost too
Speaker 2: much to make sense of it. I can see tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of bags, many of them broken open, their
Speaker 2: contents spilling out. But I also spot broken furniture and
Speaker 2: bits of clothing that flap in the wind, as well
Speaker 2: as appliances and other less identifiable objects. There is a
Speaker 2: surprising number of splintered building paletts and what seems to
Speaker 2: be the framework for an entire wall, as well as
Speaker 2: bundles of plastic taping unraveled from some building site delivery.
Speaker 2: I asked Chayang what the weirdest thing he has ever
Speaker 2: found is. He says that the police often come looking
Speaker 2: for evidence of one kind or another, usually guns or clothing,
Speaker 2: never bodies, I ask, He smiles. In Hong Kong, I
Speaker 2: did help the police look for a body, but we
Speaker 2: couldn't find it. After a minute or two, I noticed
Speaker 2: the garbage seems to be moving. A curious seething motion
Speaker 2: rippling across the surface. At first I think it must
Speaker 2: be the bag shifting as they settle. Then I realize
Speaker 2: it's the birds scrambling here and there as the rubbish
Speaker 2: is spread and compacted, gobbling anything they can see. Do
Speaker 2: you get rats?
Speaker 1: I ask?
Speaker 2: Chiang thinks for a moment and then shakes his head.
Speaker 2: Not really. There may not be rats, but it definitely smells,
Speaker 2: although far less than I expected to My untrained knows
Speaker 2: the odour is similar to my red bin at home,
Speaker 2: a sharp, slightly unpleasant tang. This is a typical fresh
Speaker 2: waist smell, Chiang says, with a smile. The older waist
Speaker 2: has a different smell. How do they differ? I ask?
Speaker 2: He shrugs. Older waiste is less good, more sour. All
Speaker 2: waste makes different smells. When we had the garden waist
Speaker 2: here a few years ago, that also generated a different odor.
Speaker 2: Even well run landfills, such as Lucas Heights, produce odors,
Speaker 2: meaning smell is a constant concern for landfill operators, especially
Speaker 2: as cities small outwards. In twenty twenty two, Clean even
Speaker 2: Haul landfill site in Melbourne's West was fined twenty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars over smell complaints. Residents spoke of not being able
Speaker 2: to open their windows because of the stench, which one
Speaker 2: person described as like a rotten chemical, like a rotten stink,
Speaker 2: like air freshener, but it's not right. Earlier this year,
Speaker 2: Bingo's subsidiary Dial Dump was fined two hundred and eighty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars over persistent reports offensive smells emanating from its
Speaker 2: vast Eastern Creek landfill in Sydney's West. Even more problematic
Speaker 2: are residents such as the underground fire at the Barrow
Speaker 2: Group's Sunshine landfill in Melbourne's West, which broke out in
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen and is still burning at the time of writing. Residence,
Speaker 2: some of whose houses are only sixty meters from the site,
Speaker 2: speak of having to stay indoors and keep windows and
Speaker 2: doors closed on days the wind blows the smoke towards them.
Speaker 2: The problem of odour and other forms of contamination is
Speaker 2: further complicated by the fact that landfills were frequently situated
Speaker 2: an area of relatively low socioeconomics status. The area around
Speaker 2: the Sunshine landfill borders some of Melbourne's least advantage suburbs.
Speaker 2: In the case of Lucas Heights. The bushland that surrounds
Speaker 2: it diminishes its impact on residents, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: there aren't ever complaints. When we get a complaint, we
Speaker 2: always try to identify the source of the smell, says Chayang.
Speaker 2: So we ask questions about what the smell is. But
Speaker 2: sometimes they cannot really describe it. They just say, tip Booter,
Speaker 2: the smell is an indicator of something else, however, something
Speaker 2: far more significant. Not all the garbage being spread and
Speaker 2: compacted by the bulldozers is inert in organic matter such
Speaker 2: as concrete and metal. Instead, it contains large amounts of
Speaker 2: organic material. A lot of this is food waste, but
Speaker 2: certainly not all of it, as the building Pellett's been
Speaker 2: crushed by the compact to demonstrate, there is also a
Speaker 2: lot of wood, as well as cardboard, paper, and other
Speaker 2: items such as nappies and adult and continence products. Even
Speaker 2: before it arrives here, this mess of organic material will
Speaker 2: have begun to decomposechrobes invade it, they begin to break
Speaker 2: down the chemical bonds that hold it together, transforming organic
Speaker 2: compounds such as proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates into sugars and
Speaker 2: amino acids and releasing carbon dioxide. But this is only
Speaker 2: the first stage in the process. As the supply of
Speaker 2: oxygen is cut off, either by the weight of the
Speaker 2: garbage above or by the layer of earth on top
Speaker 2: of the mound, anaerobic bacteria takeover. These convert the increasingly
Speaker 2: soupy mess into acids and alcohol. This process, which can
Speaker 2: continue for decades, generates heat the interior of a landfall
Speaker 2: is typically between sixty to ninety degrees centigrade, as well
Speaker 2: as large amounts of liquid in the form of highly
Speaker 2: acidic leachate. This leachate, which must be channeled out for treatment,
Speaker 2: usually contains a small gus board of toxins, ranging from
Speaker 2: heavy metals to pesticides and dangerous industrial chemicals such as
Speaker 2: polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. Of particular concern a high concentrations
Speaker 2: of PERR and polyfluo alcohol substances more commonly known as
Speaker 2: pfazes or forever chemicals used in an astonishing variety of
Speaker 2: industrial and commercial applications, fire fighting foams, non stick surfaces
Speaker 2: on cooking products, electrical cables, paint glue, waterproof fabrics, carpet
Speaker 2: and even makeup and lipstick. Pfazes have been linked to
Speaker 2: a long list of cancers, birth and developmental abnormalities, hormonal problems,
Speaker 2: and other disorders. They are also inconveniently for landfill operators,
Speaker 2: highly mobile and capable of traveling long distances if they
Speaker 2: enter groundwater. In twenty seventeen, a study of twenty seven
Speaker 2: Australian landfills found pfazes in the leech eight at all
Speaker 2: of them. And while most states now regulate the disposal
Speaker 2: of prefazes, leaks still occur, particularly as landfills age. No
Speaker 2: Less importantly, decomposing landfill produces a cocktail of gases. These
Speaker 2: include trace elements of unpleasant substances such as dimethyl and
Speaker 2: hydrogen sulfides, the compounds responsible for the unpleasant odor many
Speaker 2: of us associate with rotten garbage, ammonia and benzene, as
Speaker 2: well as considerable quantities of carbon dioxide. But most importantly,
Speaker 2: decomposing landfill releases large amounts of methane. Methane is the
Speaker 2: main constituent in natural gas, and as such is highly flammable.
Speaker 2: More significantly, however, it is an extremely potent greenhouse gas,
Speaker 2: trapping close to thirty times as much heat across a
Speaker 2: century as carbon dioxide. Its potency means curbing methane emissions
Speaker 2: is a crucial part of the fight against climate change.
Speaker 2: But after plateauing in the early years of the twenty
Speaker 2: first century, methane emissions began rising again in two thousand
Speaker 2: and six and have continued to accelerate, particularly in the
Speaker 2: years since twenty twenty. This spike and methane emissions is
Speaker 2: one of the biggest obstacles keeping global heating under one
Speaker 2: point five degrees and cutting methane emissions by forty five
Speaker 2: percent by twenty thirty would avoid zero point three d
Speaker 2: degrees of heating. About sixty percent of methane emissions are
Speaker 2: caused by humans. Three quarters of this comes from agriculture,
Speaker 2: largely of what is known as enteric fermentation or cow
Speaker 2: verbs and fossil fuel extraction, but most of the rest
Speaker 2: is produced by landfills and waste management. Indeed, while landfill
Speaker 2: gas only makes up about twenty percent of anthropogenic methane emissions,
Speaker 2: the potency of the methane means that the decomposing landfill
Speaker 2: accounts for just under two percent of greenhouse emissions, about
Speaker 2: the same as aviation or global shipping. To put that
Speaker 2: in perspective, that's almost twice Australia's total emissions, not a
Speaker 2: lot less than those of Japan, the seventh largest emitter
Speaker 2: in the world. Here in Australia, landfills are estimated to
Speaker 2: produce around three percent of our total emissions. Worse yet,
Speaker 2: that figure may be an underestimate. Until recently, calculations of
Speaker 2: the emissions from landfills were mostly based on modeling of
Speaker 2: data from a small number of facilities. But over the
Speaker 2: past few years a network of satellite its and aircrafts
Speaker 2: and carrying out more direct observations is revealed that many
Speaker 2: landfills emit far more methane than previously understood. A study
Speaker 2: published earlier this year showed landfills in the United States
Speaker 2: produced one point four times more methane than previously reported,
Speaker 2: while analysis of satellite data by The Guardian identified several
Speaker 2: hundred huge leaks of methane at landfills around the world
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two. The vast bulk of these super
Speaker 2: emitter events were centered on large, poorly managed landfills and
Speaker 2: developing countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh that are
Speaker 2: also detected in Europe, The United States and in one instance, Australia.
Speaker 2: Landfill operators have traditionally dealt with this problem by the
Speaker 2: flaring the gas, essentially burning it off as it leaks out,
Speaker 2: or by extracting the gas and using it to generate electricity.
Speaker 2: This converts to the methane into carbon dioxide, which, while
Speaker 2: still a greenhouse gas, traps far less heat, at least
Speaker 2: in the short term. Lucas Heights, like most large landfills
Speaker 2: in Australia, takes the second approach, sinking dozens of gas
Speaker 2: wells into the mound and piping the gas to a
Speaker 2: small power plant in one corner of the site, a
Speaker 2: process that produces enough electricity to power twenty five thousand homes.
Speaker 2: Clean Away estimates its gas wells at Lucas Heights capture
Speaker 2: about ninety percent of the methane the facility produces, but
Speaker 2: other facilities are less scrupulous. Australian government figures estimate that
Speaker 2: less than half the gas produced by landfills gets caught,
Speaker 2: and only about four fifths of that, or a bit
Speaker 2: under forty percent of the total, is converted into energy.
Speaker 2: Or to put that another way, more than sixty percent
Speaker 2: of the methane released by Australian landfills leaks away into
Speaker 2: the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Coming up after the break. Can Australia rise to the
Speaker 1: challenge of our waste management problem?
Speaker 2: Methane emissions produced by landfill or only one part of
Speaker 2: a far larger problem with the way Australia handles its waste.
Speaker 2: The transition to a low carbon world depends upon a
Speaker 2: move to a more sustainable and therefore more circular economy.
Speaker 2: Rather than bundling up our crap and tipping it into
Speaker 2: a hole, we should be reusing and recycling far more
Speaker 2: than we do at present. Many of the technologies needed
Speaker 2: to enable this shift already exist. Cardboard, metal, plastic, and
Speaker 2: many other materials can be recovered and recycled. Methane emissions
Speaker 2: from landfill could be rapidly reduced by requiring all landfill
Speaker 2: operators to install gas capture technology, or, better yet, by
Speaker 2: simply banning the flow of organics to a landfill altogether.
Speaker 2: Once diverted from landfill, food waste could be transformed into
Speaker 2: compost or combined with other organic waste in anaerobic digesters.
Speaker 2: These devices, which employ the same processes of decomposition that
Speaker 2: take place in landfills. Under controlled conditions allow one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of the gas produced to be captured and transformed
Speaker 2: in to energy, and the remaining material, known as digestate,
Speaker 2: to be used as compost. Material that is unsuitable for
Speaker 2: ether composting or an aerobic digestion can be incinerated or
Speaker 2: transformed in waste to energy facilities. A recognition of the
Speaker 2: importance of increasing circularity was embedded in the National Waste
Speaker 2: Policy under the Morrison government in twenty nineteen, which saw
Speaker 2: all three levels of government agree to work together to
Speaker 2: reduce waste and increase recycling. Central to the strategy was
Speaker 2: an ambitious action plan that committed to recovering or recycling
Speaker 2: eighty percent of Australia's waste, harving the amount of organic
Speaker 2: waste ends up in landfill, and reducing per capita waste
Speaker 2: by ten percent by twenty thirty. Five years later, those
Speaker 2: targets look hopelessly optimistic. Not only has the overall resource
Speaker 2: recovery rate barely shifted, but both the amount of organics
Speaker 2: we sent to landfill and per capita waste production have
Speaker 2: actually increased. Mike Ritchie is the managing director of MRA
Speaker 2: Consulting Group of Australia's leading environmental consultancies. A former Director
Speaker 2: of Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association Australia w M
Speaker 2: double r Here's worked for VISI, served as a sessional
Speaker 2: commission for the New South Wales Land and Environment Court,
Speaker 2: and spent six years as national general manager at waste
Speaker 2: giant Suez Australia. Richie says there is little to no
Speaker 2: chance Australia will meet the targets under existing policy settings.
Speaker 2: We're currently twelve million tons a year behind where we
Speaker 2: need to be to meet and eighty percent recovery rate.
Speaker 2: Richie says by twenty thirty, population growth and rising consumption
Speaker 2: mean that gap will be closer to eighteen million tons.
Speaker 2: To close that gap, we need to grow our recycling
Speaker 2: rate by about two to three million tons a year. Historically,
Speaker 2: Australia has never done anything like that. The best we've
Speaker 2: achieved is about a million tons a year, so we
Speaker 2: need to double or triple the rate we're growing recycling.
Speaker 2: Richie argues that the fundamental problem is a lack of accountability.
Speaker 2: We've seen almost zero coordination between the states, territories and
Speaker 2: local government on how to actually achieve the targets, he says,
Speaker 2: and there's not a single person in Australia at a state,
Speaker 2: federal or local level whose job it is to make
Speaker 2: sure we hit them. Gail Sloane is the chief executive
Speaker 2: w M double R. When I ask her whether Australia
Speaker 2: is on track to meet the waste targets, she laughs,
Speaker 2: We're not even close, she says. Our recycling rate is
Speaker 2: stagnated at sixty two or sixty three percent since twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: That means we have six years to grow it by
Speaker 2: seventeen percent. That just isn't going to happen on our
Speaker 2: current trajectory of investment in market development. When asked for comment,
Speaker 2: the Federal Minister for the Environment in Water Tanya plipersec
Speaker 2: emphasize the government's investment in recycling infrastructure with states, territories
Speaker 2: in industry. We're spending one billion dollars on one hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty two projects which will recycle an extra one
Speaker 2: point three million tons of waste while creating over three
Speaker 2: thousand jobs. Plybersex said in an email statement. Once this
Speaker 2: funding has been rolled out, we will almost double recycling
Speaker 2: capacity in Australia. We've also funded twenty nine projects to
Speaker 2: recycle food and organic waste, which will increase organic processing
Speaker 2: by almost one million tons each year. Sloan dismisses this claim.
Speaker 2: The investment that the government refers to as the Recycling
Speaker 2: Modernization Fund commenced under the Morrison government to address the
Speaker 2: approximately two million tons of predominantly plastic and paper material
Speaker 2: that were kept in Australia when their export was banned
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen. It was never intended to address over
Speaker 2: twenty million tons of valuable material going to landfill every year,
Speaker 2: of which we need to divert least another ten million
Speaker 2: tons in the next six years to achieve our twenty
Speaker 2: thirty targets. Part of the problem is a lack of
Speaker 2: policies designed to divert waste and in particular, greenhouse gas
Speaker 2: generating organics from landfill. In the media, recycling and diversion
Speaker 2: from landfill is often framed as a question of corporate
Speaker 2: social responsibility. But Richie and every person I have spoken
Speaker 2: to in the industry that this is a mistake. The
Speaker 2: industry is economically rational. They won't drive four hundred kilometers
Speaker 2: to pick up a ton of cardboard, nor will they
Speaker 2: drive an eight ton truck around the suburbs of Sydney
Speaker 2: to pick up food waste. He says, while he allows
Speaker 2: it at some companies committing to such practices for brand
Speaker 2: recognition reasons, that won't lead most to follow suit. The
Speaker 2: economics are dragging them the other way. In a competitive world,
Speaker 2: if I own a restaurant and it's cheaper for me
Speaker 2: to land fill my food waste, then that's where it's going.
Speaker 2: Waste is like a river, It flows downhill to the
Speaker 2: cheapest price, and in Australia that's almost always landfill. In Europe,
Speaker 2: governments have simply banned the flow of many materials to
Speaker 2: landfill altogether, resulting in rates of land filling they are
Speaker 2: as much as ninety to ninety five percent lower than
Speaker 2: in Australia, which he prefers the use of levies which
Speaker 2: they allow more flexibility. But he argues that either way,
Speaker 2: governments haven't done that work. They haven't approached it and said,
Speaker 2: all right, we've made a commitment to a target of
Speaker 2: eighty percent recycling and fifty percent of organics and a
Speaker 2: ten percent reduction in per capital waste generation, and this
Speaker 2: is what the economic signals to achieve that need to be.
Speaker 2: That's what's missing. He says that high level plan in
Speaker 2: each state that says, this is the infrastructure we need
Speaker 2: to build to achieve the levee, to achieve the targets.
Speaker 2: This is the amount of plastic recycling infrastructure we need,
Speaker 2: or concrete recycling, or construction waste or commercial waste recycling
Speaker 2: that we need to lift each of those sectors up
Speaker 2: to the eighty percent. At present, every Australian jurisdiction other
Speaker 2: than the Northern Territory imposes a landfill levee. These levees
Speaker 2: are generally higher in metropolitan areas than in regional centers,
Speaker 2: and range from just under forty five dollars per ton
Speaker 2: in Tasmania to one hundred and seventy dollars ten per
Speaker 2: ton in Sydney. This price signal has already been extremely
Speaker 2: effective at lifting rates of recovery and recycling of construction waste,
Speaker 2: which have risen from around sixty four percent a decade
Speaker 2: ago to almost eighty percent to day, partly because metal
Speaker 2: and rubble and other forms of building waste are heavy
Speaker 2: and therefore attract high levees, and partly because materials such
Speaker 2: as steel and concrete are highly recyclable but While recovery
Speaker 2: rates in the construction industry are rising elsewhere, they're heading south.
Speaker 2: Rates of recovery of commercial and industrial waste have fallen sharply,
Speaker 2: dropping from around sixty five percent to under sixty percent
Speaker 2: since twenty sixteen, and after declining almost ten percent between
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen, recovery of municipal waste has
Speaker 2: stagnated it under fifty percent. Richie argues that in New
Speaker 2: South Wales, an annual rise of just six dollars over
Speaker 2: three years would be enough to place recovery and recycling
Speaker 2: on a trajectory that would make it possible to meet
Speaker 2: the targets, provided the revenue as invested in developing recycling infrastructure.
Speaker 2: The problem isn't a lack of mechanisms, he says, it's
Speaker 2: a lack of strategic thinking and willingness to take on
Speaker 2: the issue of waste management, which has spent six months
Speaker 2: in New South Wales with the CEO of the Vironment
Speaker 2: Protection Authority doing almost daily press conferences about as best
Speaker 2: as in garden mulch. And important as that is, it's
Speaker 2: just not as important as building a sustainable society. This
Speaker 2: problem is particularly stark when it comes to food waste
Speaker 2: or what people in the waste business dub putes for putrescibles.
Speaker 2: Food waste makes up well over half the waste produced
Speaker 2: by households, and most of it ends up in landfill,
Speaker 2: where it produces me sane. Because the cost of landfill
Speaker 2: remains below the point where it is more economic for
Speaker 2: councils to start separating out food waste, uptake of food
Speaker 2: organics and garden organics recycling or FOGO has been limited,
Speaker 2: and in states where it has begun, such as Victoria
Speaker 2: and South Australia, has been driven by mandates. In states
Speaker 2: such as New South Wales, where councils are not required
Speaker 2: to move to separate FOGO collection until twenty thirty, less
Speaker 2: than a quarter of Sydney's councils are set up FOGO schemes.
Speaker 2: As a result, New South Wales has not seen the
Speaker 2: development of industrial scale composting facilities such as those that
Speaker 2: have come online in Victoria and South Australia in recent years.
Speaker 2: But food waste is only one area where a failure
Speaker 2: to put in place the necessary market conditions is holding
Speaker 2: back investment in recycling. Although technology exists to convert many
Speaker 2: plastics into pellets capable of being re used. Australian manufacturers
Speaker 2: are not required to use a minimum amount of recycled
Speaker 2: plastic or to use locally produced pellets, meaning that in
Speaker 2: those cases where a cycled plastic is incorporated in new products,
Speaker 2: it is almost always imported from China, where it can
Speaker 2: be produced more cheaply than it can here. Similarly, almost
Speaker 2: two point five million tons of timber ends up in landfill,
Speaker 2: where it emits large quantities of methane. Much of this
Speaker 2: timber also comes from native forests, contradicting the timber industry's
Speaker 2: claims that the carbon contained in the timber removed from
Speaker 2: forests is stored in wood products rather than ending up
Speaker 2: in the atmosphere. These changes need to be complemented by
Speaker 2: better regulation higher up the waste stream. Products. Jewish ship schemes,
Speaker 2: which require manufacturers to take responsibility for the clar election
Speaker 2: and disposal of the products they produce, have the potential
Speaker 2: to reduce environmental impact. This is especially true when it
Speaker 2: comes to hazardous materials, but the same principles are also
Speaker 2: applicable to many non hazardous materials. The most recent nationwide
Speaker 2: study of product stewardship schemes published in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: identified one hundred and six schemes in Australia, covering materials
Speaker 2: as various as clothing, beauty products, and agricultural chemicals. In total,
Speaker 2: these schemes collected three hundred and sixty six thousand tons
Speaker 2: of materials in twenty twenty two. Yet almost all of
Speaker 2: these schemes are extremely small scale, and the vast majority
Speaker 2: collect only a fraction of the products they apply to. Indeed,
Speaker 2: if the one hundred and six schemes studied, only nine
Speaker 2: had an effectiveness of more than fifty percent, and the
Speaker 2: remaining ninety seven had an average effectiveness of just four
Speaker 2: percent or didn't report at all. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the schemes
Speaker 2: that are most effective are mostly mandatory, although tire and
Speaker 2: paint schemes, both of which are funded by industry, are
Speaker 2: also extremely successful. In some cases, the lack of effective
Speaker 2: products stewardship schemes has significant safety implications. The failure to
Speaker 2: mandate the collection of batteries is believed to be a
Speaker 2: factor in the increasing number of fires at landfills on
Speaker 2: garbage trucks. Anecdotally, the problem appears to be driven by vapes,
Speaker 2: which have an habit of igniting when crushed in garbage compactors.
Speaker 2: But it also means manufacturers continue to design and produce
Speaker 2: goods that cannot be easily recycled or reused because they
Speaker 2: are not being made responsible for the cost of disposing them.
Speaker 2: Behind all these questions, of course, is the problem of
Speaker 2: how much waste we produced in the first place and
Speaker 2: the consumption that drives it. Again, government has a role
Speaker 2: to play through the establishment of right to repair obligations
Speaker 2: and other schemes that extend the lifetime of products, or
Speaker 2: the outlawering of single use products in unnecessary packaging. But ultimately,
Speaker 2: cutting consumption depends upon a shift away from a culture
Speaker 2: the privileges the accumulation of private wealth to one built
Speaker 2: around principles of public good and the shared use of resources.
Speaker 2: A move to a more circular economy would have huge
Speaker 2: benefits for Australia. In almost every instance, recycling not only
Speaker 2: avoids the need to source new raw materials, thus avoiding
Speaker 2: destructive mining and deforestation, it uses far less energy. Recycled cardboard,
Speaker 2: for instance, requires only around three quarters of the energy
Speaker 2: in a fraction of the water needed to produce cardboard
Speaker 2: from virgin pulp, while Fabricating an aluminium can out of
Speaker 2: recycled metal only demands around five per cent of the
Speaker 2: energy required to produce one from scratch. Similarly, recycling a
Speaker 2: ton of glass avoids the extraction of one point two
Speaker 2: tons of raw materials such as sand, soda, ash, and limestone,
Speaker 2: and reduces energy consumption by three quarters across the economy,
Speaker 2: these savings stack up quickly. One recent study suggests that,
Speaker 2: in combination with the banning of organics from landfill and
Speaker 2: more effective capture of landfill gas and waste to energy,
Speaker 2: increase rates of recovery and recycling could cut a strugger's
Speaker 2: greenhouse gas emissions by up to ten percent and create
Speaker 2: up to fifty thousand jobs. Why then, aren't governments taking
Speaker 2: more decisive action? Governments don't like the grind, says Gale Sloane.
Speaker 2: This is long term systemic policy, and that means making
Speaker 2: decisions and sticking to them. Instead, they want to be
Speaker 2: doing new stuff and announceables. But she also thinks it's
Speaker 2: about a failure to understand the sector and a tendency
Speaker 2: not to connect questions about how we handle waste with
Speaker 2: climate and economic policy. Waste is still an end of
Speaker 2: pipe afterthought for government, Sloane says, they don't take a material,
Speaker 2: carbon and industry approach, so it's a very nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: horse and cart, throw it out in the streets thing
Speaker 2: for them. They're not thinking about the big questions, why
Speaker 2: do we buy so much stuff? Where do we invest?
Speaker 2: How do we improve design and manufacture? None of that
Speaker 2: is where it needs to be. There's none of that
Speaker 2: green deal thinking. Mike Ritchie thinks ministers frequently lacked the
Speaker 2: bandwidth to spend time on waste policy, especially when so
Speaker 2: much energy is being devoted to the energy transition. He
Speaker 2: also admits divining a baffling. There are things you can
Speaker 2: criticize about the government's climate policies. The one thing you
Speaker 2: can't say is they aren't giving it a red hot go,
Speaker 2: he says. But that's certainly not the case with waste.
Speaker 2: When was the last time you heard someone saying the
Speaker 2: government's going too hard on the landfill levy, or that
Speaker 2: it shouldn't ban organics from landfill or force big companies
Speaker 2: to recycle their food waste. It just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: These are easy political wins. It's almost risk free politics.
Speaker 2: At the end of my tour of Lucas Heights. We
Speaker 2: stop at the northern end of the facility. Beside us
Speaker 2: yawns a huge pit, perhaps six hundred meters square and
Speaker 2: almost fifty meters deep. At the far end, a pull
Speaker 2: of leech eight gleams in the winter light. At the
Speaker 2: other several earth movers are loading rubble and dirt into
Speaker 2: a truck, ready for it to be transported to the
Speaker 2: mound behind us. Elsi Chayang explains that once the pit
Speaker 2: is lined, will stop adding rubbish to the top of
Speaker 2: the mound and start trucking in here instead, And once
Speaker 2: it is full in twenty thirty seven or so, it
Speaker 2: too will be capped, and this entire facility will cease operation.
Speaker 2: As he speaks, I'm struck again by the pride he
Speaker 2: takes in this place, its sufficiency and order. But I'm
Speaker 2: also reminded of the sheer volume of garbage that ends
Speaker 2: up here, and the failure of imagination and political will
Speaker 2: it embodies. Perhaps that is just another manifestation of our
Speaker 2: tendency to treat waste as an afterthought, something we banish
Speaker 2: to the edge of consciousness. Perhaps it would be better
Speaker 2: understood as a symptom of the culture of consumption that
Speaker 2: shapes our society and the extractive assumptions upon which it rests. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: there is no question we need to find better ways
Speaker 2: to think about the waste we make, what we do
Speaker 2: with it, and to recognize the implications of our tendency
Speaker 2: not to do so.
Speaker 1: That was James Bradley reading his story The Tipping Point.
Speaker 1: For more of Australia's best long form writing, visit themonthly
Speaker 1: dot com dot A. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 2: See you tomorrow.