Waste generation and resource recovery in Australia

d)Dumping and littering

Illegal dumping involves significant quantities of material surreptitiously disposed of to avoid costs, while littering may be more thoughtless than malicious. Dumping and littering reduce aesthetic amenity and can be a danger to human health. Materials may be washed into waterways where they become a major hazard for aquatic animals through entanglement or ingestion.
Disposing of dumped and littered materials is an expensive burden on local governments and other agencies. Victorian local governments reported spending over $10m cleaning up litter and dumped rubbish during 2009/10 (Sustainability Victoria 2011 p.45). Anecdotally, dumping is claimed to increase with rising landfill costs. Cigarette butts are the most numerous littered item, and paper and plastic are the most voluminous (McGregor Tan Research 2010 p.23).
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) recently undertook research into marine debris in Australian waters (Hardesty and Wilcox 2011). It found that marine debris is concentrated near major population centres, indicating that domestic sources are significant. The report noted that “Australia is probably a net exporter of debris to some neighbouring marine regions and surrounding countries” (p.20). The main items observed as washed ashore included cigarette products and plastic bags.

e)The environmental benefits of resource recovery

Life cycle assessments have consistently demonstrated that for most materials and most circumstances, recycling results in net savings in energy and net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions (Ackerman 1997, Grant et al. 2003, ACOR 2008). The latter report suggested that recycling saved about 8.8 Mt CO₂-e in 2006—equivalent to about 1.5% of Australia’s total emissions—due mainly to the avoided need to manufacture materials from virgin sources. The report also identified significant savings in water and energy use due to recycling. The greenhouse benefits of recycling various materials are shown in Figure based on the Australian Council of Recycling (ACOR) report.
Figure : The greenhouse benefits of recycling by material type



Source: ACOR (2008)
The production of compost from wastes, where a quality compost product is generated, is environmentally beneficial because the products can improve soil quality, retain soil moisture, promote plant growth, build soil carbon, recycle phosphorus and substitute for energy-intensive fertilisers.
Energy recovery from renewable organic wastes is beneficial because it offsets the need to generate energy from fossil fuels (e.g. coal and gas). The major source of energy from waste in Australia is currently from landfill gas used to generate electricity. Energy recovery from landfill gas started in the early 1990s and now consumes about a quarter of the methane produced by Australian landfills (see Figure ). Various other waste processing facilities also generate minor amounts of electricity through anaerobic digestion.

i)Embodied greenhouse gas in waste disposal to landfill

The manufacture of inorganic materials (e.g. metals and plastics) involves the use of energy and emission of greenhouse gases. When those materials are subsequently landfilled, these ‘embodied emissions’ can be considered lost as new virgin materials would need to be generated to replace them. Figure illustrates the embodied emissions in four categories of inorganic wastes sent to landfill in Australia. The greatest loss of embodied emissions is shown to be plastic wastes. Note that the factors used to generate this chart are based on world-wide averages. The high carbon intensity of Australian energy production means that the true values are likely to be higher than those shown.
Figure : The ‘embodied greenhouse gas emissions’ of key wastes sent to landfill in Australia in 2010/11



Source of factor data: Hammond and Jones (2008)

25.Waste data collation definitions

Several definitions that inform the broad scope of the data in this report are discussed in this section³¹, including:

‘materials consumption’

‘waste’

the levels of the waste hierarchy (see Figure ) from ‘waste avoidance’ through to ‘disposal’

various other definitions that underlie this data collation including ‘waste generation’, ‘resource recovery’, and ‘resource recovery rate’.
The principle of managing waste according to the waste hierarchy is written into legislation or regulation in every jurisdiction in Australia and many waste policy targets and data collations are based on the various levels of the hierarchy.
Figure : The waste hierarchy

a)Materials consumption

It is useful to consider and define the various stages of materials consumption to understand how materials recycling, energy recovery and disposal relate to material consumption. Materials consumption, for the purposes of waste data accounting and collation, typically involves the following five stages:

1. 
   primary production of raw materials (mining) and livestock (agriculture)
   

26.raw material processing

27.manufacturing of products and materials

28.consumer use (consumption)

29.waste generation.

Materials consumption: is defined as the process of taking natural resources, converting them to materials for manufacturing and use by consumers, and the generation of wastes (which are either recovered or disposed).

a)Waste

To enable solid waste data to be collated consistently and accurately it is important to define (solid) waste for the purposes of data collation.

i)All waste

The Victorian Environment Protection Act 1970 defines waste using several criteria. The most relevant for solid waste are:

“(b) any discarded, rejected, unwanted, surplus or abandoned matter;

(c) any otherwise discarded, rejected, abandoned, unwanted or surplus matter intended for

i) recycling, reprocessing, recovery or purification by a separate operation from that which produced the matter;

ii) sale”
The NSW Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 defines wastes in several ways. The most relevant are:

“a) any discarded, rejected, unwanted, surplus or abandoned substance, or

b) any otherwise discarded, rejected, unwanted, surplus or abandoned substance
intended for sale or for recycling, processing, recovery or purification by a separate
operation from that which produced the substance, or

c) any processed, recycled, reused or recovered substance produced wholly or partly from
waste that is applied to land, or used as fuel, but only in the circumstances prescribed
by the regulations…”
The NSW Act also states that:

“A substance is not precluded from being waste for the purposes of this Act merely because it is or may be processed, recycled, reused or recovered”.

The National Waste Report (2010), published by the Standing Council on Environment and Water includes the following definition of waste:

“... discarded, rejected, unwanted, surplus or abandoned matter intended for recycling, re–processing, recovery, reuse, or purification by a separate operation from that which produced the matter, or for sale, whether of any value or not”.

In the European Union (EU) under the Waste Framework Directive European Directive 2008/98/EC, waste is defined as:

“an object the holder discards, intends to discard or is required to discard”.

The EU definition is illustrated below.
Figure : EU illustration of the definition of waste



Source: Waste Framework Directive European Directive 2008/98/EC
The definitions discussed above do not characterise waste with reference to its perceived monetary value at the point in time that the waste is generated. Most emphasise the behaviour or actions of the consumer as much as the waste material.
In Waste and Recycling in Australia 2011, the Commonwealth Government took the following position in establishing the scope of what should be included in waste data reporting:

“Recommendation 1 … the scope should be limited to waste material that is recycled, recovered for energy, and disposed. Re-use is excluded from the scope”.

The definitions of waste (above) are inconsistent in relation to whether products or materials that are reused can be included in the definition of waste (‘reuse’ is defined below in). Several definitions encompass at least some reuse but the EU excludes reuse from waste (as shown at Figure ). Including reuse in the definition of waste is impractical for data collation purposes because reuse is not readily quantifiable at a state or national level. Consistent with Waste and Recycling in Australia 2011, this report excludes reuse data (see c for further discussion).
Waste (for data collation purposes): materials or products that are unwanted or have been discarded, rejected or abandoned. Waste includes materials or products that are recycled, converted to energy, or disposed. Materials and products that are reused (for their original or another purpose without reprocessing) are not waste because they remain in use.
This definition of waste sets the broad scope of reporting in this document. Its application requires a number of additional assumptions and considerations, which are further discussed in section 31.

ii)Solid waste

Practical definitions for ‘solid’ are generally inadequate in the waste context. Materials such as processed sludges are often disposed to landfill as solid waste but can have a high liquid waste content.
DECCW (2009 p.5) defines liquid waste as follows:

“Liquid waste means any waste that:

• 
  has an angle of repose of less than 5 degrees above horizontal, or
  
• 
  becomes free-flowing at or below 60 degrees Celsius or when it is transported, or
  
• 
  is generally not capable of being picked up by a spade or shovel.”
  

Adopting this approach, solid waste can be defined as below.

Solid waste is waste that:

1. can have an angle of repose of greater than 5 degrees above horizontal, or

2. does not become free-flowing at or below 60 degrees Celsius or when it is transported, or

3. is generally capable of being picked up by a spade or shovel.