Outrage over decision to dump recycling in Ipswich

Ipswich City Council has announced that from now on all contents from yellow lid recycle bins will be sent to landfill. Gayle Sloan, CEO of WMAA, is extremely disappointed with the council’s decision, which she describes as “completely out of step with community expectations”.

Greens spokesperson for Waste and Recycling, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, urges the Ipswich City Council to reconsider their decision and calls on the federal government and states to urgently agree on a policy response at next Friday’s COAG meeting that averts similar decisions from other Australian councils.

Recycling contractors notified the Ipswich council that the current rate being paid to them by council would skyrocket if recycling was to continue. The increase in costs in the order of $2 million per annum could potentially equate to a 1.5% to 2% rate rise.

Deputy Mayor Wayne Wendt said: “This is a fundamental shift in how we as a community think about waste.”

Cr Wendt advised residents:

• People should continue to sort their waste as per normal — bins will be collected on the same days, with yellow lid bins collected each fortnight.
• Green waste doesn’t change. That will still be recycled.
• Red lid bins will still be collected weekly.

“The focus on recycling will now be very much about waste reduction. Everybody plays a role in the protection of our environment, and ways to reduce waste now become even more important to our daily lives,” he said.

The WMAA said the council is going backwards by sending recyclable material to landfill. “The community expects and trusts government and industry to manage this essential service responsibly. This is an issue that goes beyond cost to value, including the ability to create jobs and manage adverse environmental impacts by the continued use of virgin material, when there are renewable alternatives. The people of Ipswich are not sorting their recyclable materials into a different bin just so that council can send it to the same place as their waste,” said Sloan.

The China National Sword has impacted about 1 million tonnes of recyclable commodities each year from Australia. WMAA believes this is an opportunity for Australia to invest in significant remanufacturing capacity for these products.

“The China National Sword policy should not be being used as an excuse by councils to dump these materials in the ground, but the decision by Ipswich City Council is a timely warning of how councils right across Australia might act if the federal government doesn’t put forward a plan to lead us out of this crisis,” said Senator Whish-Wilson.

The Queensland Government has signalled that it supports the development of investment in new waste and resource infrastructure with the development of a new waste and resource recovery strategy, underpinned by a waste levy.

“The lack of such a policy and a levy has left Queensland as one of the worst recyclers in Australia, with low recycling rates and lower investment in industry. It also means that unlike other states there are no levy funds available to assist councils to transition through this changing time,” said Sloan.

“We understand that council took this decision in isolation of broader industry and government, failing to try and work with others to solve this issue and demonstrate real leadership at this challenging time,” said Sloan. “The solution is not landfilling!”

Senator Whish-Wilson said, “No council should be dumping recycling in landfill full stop.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Sergey Nivens