Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Waste and recycling management

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (09:50): Councils across Victoria are currently being asked to consider signing contracts to send their municipal waste to a new waste incinerator for decades to come. This is extremely worrying and highlights the failure of this Labor government to move to a genuinely circular economy. For decades they have neglected waste and recycling, and they are now looking to take the lazy way out by allowing private companies to set up waste incinerators wherever they like, with essentially no government oversight about where they go, where the waste will come from or what the long-term impacts will be.

Waste incineration is problematic on several fronts. It is highly emissions intensive. Toxic gases and residual ash are harmful for health and the environment, and it completely undermines the economic incentives to reduce waste and develop more sustainable alternative recycling markets. These beasts need to be fed a minimum amount of garbage to operate properly, so locking these councils into long-term contracts means not only that they have no incentive to reduce their waste, but they have an obligation to generate it and provide it. Jurisdictions across Europe and the USA are moving away from waste incineration for all of these reasons. There are better pathways that Victoria could choose, but this government cannot be bothered, and ratepayers, taxpayers and the environment and climate are all going to be locked into paying for the state government’s poor decisions for decades to come.