Managing waste is a major challenge for countries worldwide and Australia is no exception. Australia’s fastest growing city, Melbourne, Victoria has doubled its total waste generation from 7.4 million tonnes in 2000 to 13.4 million tonnes in 2018. Why are we facing growing amounts of waste and even more dumped on our landfills despite our efforts in recycling? The main issue lies with the contamination of our waste.
Victoria has doubled its total waste generation from 7.4 million tonnes in 2000 to 13.4 million tonnes in 2018. Image: www.pexels.com
Waste contamination in our system
Our current system allows waste to be placed into two or three bins, where it is mixed and unsorted, creating a problem where it makes it nearly impossible to extract the waste that can be recycled. Although Australians are willing to do more at home to separate waste, around a quarter of people surveyed believed their recycling effort will end up in landfills anyway.
Elissa McNamara, a project director at Infrastructure Victoria says that "the system where everything's all put in the one bin has been around for 20 years, and we haven't updated that ... the glass gets broken, paper and cardboard get tiny particles of glass in it … they're so mixed up and contaminated that it's really hard to extract a high-value material that can be recycled.”
The Recycling and Resource Recovery Infrastructure report to the Government in October 2019 also highlighted another alarming problem: The recycling practices for 79 councils in Victoria are different. So that means each council accepts different materials, has different approaches to collecting organic matter, and in some cases, the colours of each bin have different meanings based on the council area.
All of these confusing differences inevitably lead to the contamination of waste. The report reflected that "Victoria’s current co-mingled system does not produce sufficiently clean streams to support end markets for recycled materials."
Victoria’s solution: The six bin recycling system
Infrastructure Victoria has proposed that households have six bins as part of the solution to the contamination of recycled waste. This would mean separating our waste into organics, plastics, paper and card, glass and metals.
Infrastructure Victoria's proposed six bin recycling system means you could be sorting your waste into organics, plastics, paper and card, glass and metals. Image: www.pexels.com
Public opinions are mixed in response to the new six bin system. Some are optimistic, citing Wales as an example, where the six bins will not be the usual-sized bins that we normally use. "We don't necessarily need six big wheelie bins that take up space in our garage or on the kerbside." Elissa McNamara explained. "In Wales, they use a stackable crate system on wheels which includes compartments which separate the waste." However others such as the chief executive of the Victorian Waste Management Association, Peter Anderson, do not think the six bin system will be effective.
Councils have begun trialling this new system, with the City of Hobsons Bay to add an extra bin for glass and another for food waste. However, it is too early to judge whether this new system will prove to be successful.
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