How Victoria’s recycling industry ended up in the dumps – Australia

Posted on February 23, 2021 by DrRossH in Landfills and Disposal

Source: How Victoria’s recycling industry ended up in the dumps

Two years ago, nearly two-thirds of “recyclables” Victorians dutifully placed in their yellow-topped bins ended up in landfill.

More than 390,000 tonnes of recyclables were dumped in landfills in 2019-20 – nearly four times the level of half a decade ago.

And tens of thousands of tonnes have been incinerated in more than 100 industrial fires in the past three years, many inadvertently fuelled by all those bottles and boxes that didn’t end up where they were meant to.

Proportion of recycling that went to landfill

Includes: an estimated 30–40,000 tonnes of fire-related losses in July 2017;
20,000 tonnes of licence compliance related disposal in March 2019;
220,000 tonnes of operational and safety related disposal in 2019–20.

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The governments on both sides here have failed badly.  This is going to cost the tax payers $100s of millions and cost the environment a lot of polluting of dangerous chemicals and so much plastic waste.