Australia faces similar challenges to most developed nations in dealing with waste issues. Waste is left over or superfluous liquid, solid, gaseous or radioactive matter generated from the consumption of resources in order to meet of consumer needs, and often contributes to pollution, which affects public health and the environment. Waste is an indicator of our inability to live in a sustainable manner, in harmony with our environment.
Action to reduce waste, either by encouraging material efficiency, reducing the generation of waste, or enabling the recovery and reuse of discarded material is a critical element of sustainable development. A shift from disposing of waste to landfill to managing waste as a resource means our society needs new ways to buy, use, dispose and make consumer products.
Australia creates some 28 million tones of waste annually and this amount continues to increase. Despite developments in resource recovery, millions of tonnes of materials continue to be disposed to landfill. Accounting for the majority of waste that is generated in Australia, households generated more than half of Australia’s waste, and disposed much of it of through usual waste collection and disposal to landfill. For example, Eco Recycle Victoria estimates that in 2002 only 13% of Australia’s total plastic consumption was sent for recycling. Often compliance with environmental regulation is lax and the full cost of managing landfill is not recovered, especially outside of capital cities where regulation is less rigorously enforced and landfill prices remain low. The volume of solid waste disposed to landfill across Australia remains one of the highest in the world, at around one tonne per person per year.
Waste is created by the consumption of resources to manufacture products that service consumer needs. The waste problem is increased by planned obsolescence and the single use and disposal process of products. This linear pattern of resource flows, based on single-use and then disposal is unsustainable in the long term and generates unwanted social, environmental and economic impacts. Currently, recycling is restricted to a relatively narrow band of products and materials, and transitions to make Australia’s economy more resource efficient lag behind many other countries. However, the benefits of many current waste reduction policies, such as landfill levies, have not been demonstrated.
The difficulties in finding acceptable sites for landfills, in particular those accepting contaminated waste, only highlights the urgency of finding better ways of reducing waste generation and eventually the handling of waste streams generated by our industrialized society. There are also great opportunities in developing processes which could be used in developing countries where waste disposal processes are less controlled and more primitive and therefore environmental pollution from waste is more common. Households, manufacturing industries, buildings and infrastructure development and management are major sources of material resource consumption. Each is the subject of increasing study concerning the efficient use of resources. For households, the focus is on the potential for behaviour and lifestyle change to reduce the demand on natural resources.
For manufacturing industries, the focus is on material reuse, product stewardship, recycling and re-manufacturing and the environmental signatures for manufactured products and materials (eco-labelling). Some companies are also adopting green purchasing or other forms of supply chain management.
For built environments, the focus is on the efficiency of constructing and operating buildings as well as planning the scale and form of settlement. These all have effects on other urban sustainability issues such as transportation.
All levels of government have programs in place to manage and reduce waste streams, e.g. EcoRecycle Victoria. However improvements are needed in a wide range of areas, and co-operation and co-ordination of programs and program improvements will be required to achieve improved performance. Increasing sustainability in all aspects of society will result in better resource usage and reduced waste streams. Solutions in this area will require better planning processes, design and technologies to be implemented to minimize the waste streams produced as well as effective policy development and economic incentives that fully recognize the costs and benefits of waste avoidance and recovery. However, there will always be a need for “end of pipe” technologies for treating the waste streams produced by any society; these need to be cost competitive and increasingly efficient.
The EIANZ believes that more sustainable patterns of production and consumption are needed to reduce the current waste streams and better use resources.
The EIANZ believes that co-operation and co-ordination of waste reduction programs across a wide range of areas is required. Better planning, improved design and production technologies can minimize waste. This will require studies involving a range of disciplines, effective policy development and economic incentives that fully recognise the costs and benefits of waste avoidance and recovery to society. In particular the EIANZ advocates measures in the following areas:
- Eco-efficient design
o Design tools to assess building performance at the concept, design, construction and occupation stages
o Incentive schemes for more efficient building designs and process to be included in the design stage
o Planning processes including the design of buildings, subdivisions, land zoning and community facilities that are more efficient in the use of resources, e.g. solar efficient, and provide for efficient transport and service infrastructure
o Design for disassembly, e.g. manufacture of cars
o Cradle-to-cradle design, taking account of i.e. recyclability and longevity
o Improved packaging processes involving materials which can either be reused, recycled or are biodegradable
o Use of recycled materials and the development of closed loop systems - Cleaner production initiatives
o Product stewardship, e.g. product and container deposit and return schemes
o Voluntary waste minimisation programmes, for example the waste = food concept that acknowledges that many waste materials can be inputs into other processes and the development of eco-industrial complexes capitalising on multiple waste streams
o Setting minimum efficiency standards for various classes of appliances and equipment to reduce energy and resource consumption and reduce environmental impacts - Economic regulation and incentives
o Addressing market failures and distortions throughout product life cycles
o Transparent landfill pricing that fully funds environmental management and remediation and reflects the lost opportunity costs of non-recovery of resources
o Pay-as-you-throw pricing for curbside waste and recycling services
o Green procurement programs in large organizations, e.g. government and industry
o Responsible investment that encourages more sustainable patterns of production and consumption - Better information
o Continuing education for the public and industry on ways of reducing waste streams and consumption of natural resources – a particular responsibility for government at all levels
o Formal waste education in the school curriculum connected to the practical operation of the learning institution
o Improved, reliable life-cycle data for products and services to support more informed decision making
o Improved and expanded environmental product labelling, e.g. certified eco-labelling
o Independent entities to encourage best practice and drive improved performance (e.g. the Green Building Council of Australia). - Research, development and demonstration
o Developing new processes and technologies that provide community needs in a more sustainable way, e.g. new transport or energy production systems
o Developing new technologies for waste reduction, processing and reuse, e.g. technologies for cleaning contaminated soil, recycling waste water and treating and recycling materials from municipal solid waste.
o Developing industrial ecology parks, i.e. the establishment of industries close together that can exchange materials and waste products to improve resource efficiency and reduce waste production
For more information on EIANZ go to www.eianz.org
