Efficient materials management - the next big thing

ACOR (previously the Australian Council of Recyclers) has reinvented itself to take on the umbrella industry role of leading the push for governments to recognise the economic and environmental benefits of three complementary business systems: product stewardship, resource recovery and recycling. The organisation’s revised constitution and new leadership is designed to provide all businesses in these three sectors with a stronger voice nationally.

If governments truly want to address environmental sustainability in a holistic sense, they must not only focus on the resources which are supply or climate change constrained - energy and water - but also on the flow of products and materials which drive their consumption on an economy-wide basis.

This is why government action on sustainable materials resource management (SMRM) is the ‘next big thing’ requiring government attention. The emergence of a National Waste Policy and the pending development of national legislation to underpin new product stewardship systems, initially for computers and televisions, are harbingers of its dramatically escalating significance.

SMRM is not just about the traditional focus on ‘waste management’ - the wheels and landfill business - and trying to mitigate its worst environmental effects. It involves an integrated whole systems approach to managing the vast flow of goods churning through the economy. This is a totally different paradigm from ‘waste management’. It is about the entire life cycle of material resources being managed within a framework of optimum resource efficiency where waste doesn’t exist.

Material resource efficiency is the foundation of SMRM and is manifested in product design (‘design for environment’), extended producer responsibility (‘product stewardship’), the recovery of material by-products (‘resource recovery’) and processing those recovered materials into new products or their material components (‘recycling’). This is the ‘cradle to cradle’ approach to product management.

The whole system of SMRM is known generically to ordinary Australians as ‘recycling’, a closed loop approach to the management of products, packaging and materials. It epitomises materials use that is sustainable and, ultimately, the most efficient.

What is not recognised is that Australia already has a major ‘industry’ sector operating this SMRM ‘system’: an economic sector in its own right. But it is a sector that is ‘under the radar’, crying out for government recognition and support.

Other ‘traditional’ industries have organisations that represent them. The AIG in manufacturing, NFF in agriculture, Tourism Council for tourism, the Minerals Council for mining, for example. More recently, the Clean Energy Council (formed out of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy) brought together the fragmented renewable energy industry to provide a single effective voice with which to engage government. The benefits, particularly in recent responses to mining and renewable energy, are obvious.

That’s why now is the time for all businesses in the recycling sector to come together to forge a strong national organisation, so that government can be made to listen and to respond. Broad industry representation is essential in order to gain formal federal and state government recognition and to build a resource base which enables the national body to invest in policy and representation that can deliver results.

ACOR provides this new opportunity for all players in the whole recycling process - product owners and manufacturers, resource recovery and recycling businesses - to gain recognition as a real and legitimate industry in the same way as the traditional industries already mentioned.

SMRM is the next wave of opportunity for government activity in resource efficiency. It is the next wave of business opportunity in the economy.

The time is ripe. It’s now or never.

*Rod Welford is the Chief Executive of Australian Council of Recycling, the peak national industry body for the Australian Recycling Industry. He retired in March 2009 from the State Parliament of Queensland after nearly 20 years as a legislator and policy leader, including as Minister for Environment & Heritage and Minister for Natural Resources. His qualifications include a Master of Science in Environmental Management and a Certificate in Permaculture Design.