Skip Bin Hire Sydney in a Turmoil
The New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority (NSW EPA) have been at the center of a bit of a “dust-up“ in the NSW waste Industry. This dust up resulted in the EPA making a media release on 10th May 2022 in an attempt to avoid the blame of escalating waste disposal costs across Sydney and the NSW Metropolitan Levy Area. The outcome of the dust-up between the EPA and waste businesses was that “To improve the quality of recovered fines, the EPA will focus on education to raise awareness about the need to exclude contaminants like asbestos from skip bins”.
The EPA had identified 2 issues that were at the center of their actions. The EPA had found asbestos fibers and micro-plastics in recycled soils. They concluded that these materials had come from the “Recovered fines that are residues left at the bottom of waste skip bins after all large recyclable material has been removed. The EPA has found this material can contain contaminants like asbestos and micro-plastics, which can pose potential health risks and cause environmental harm”.
Another potential contribution to the issues in the NSW Waste industry has been the consolidation of disposal sites in fewer and fewer businesses thus creating an oligopoly (a state of limited competition, in which a market is shared by a small number suppliers).
For decades it has been possible to dispose of waste by either volume (cubic meter) or weight (by the tonne). I suspect the EPA wants all disposals to be measured by weight (as volume is often open to “funny business” or maybe manipulation) because how do you prove what a cubic meter of waste really weighed. In the last year many, if not most disposal sites have announced that they will no longer offer disposal rates based on volume. The suppliers (landfill owners) in the disposal marketplace have indicated to their customers this is because of the EPA’s change of regulation. This may or may not be true and communication between the landfills and their customers is not as good as it could be. Often the channel for communication is the weighbridge operator who is employed to read scales and not for their ability to communicate or articulate complex business issues.
The waste industry is a cornerstone of civilisation (because we would be much of a civil society if we lived in in the middle of all the rubbish we produced) and our government should be doing a better job of regulating it. The waste industry has become a state government cash cow to prop up their finances. And like most cash cows it is those least able to afford this tax who end up paying it. If you you get the chance ask you local politician (State MPs, Senators and local Councillors) why they are letting this happen on their watch?
The NSW EPA are the NSW State Government Authority responsible for overseeing the disposal of waste and the environment in NSW. The NSW Parliament passed the Protection of the Environment Operations (Waste) Regulation in 1996 (that has been updated in 2006 and 2014) and the Authority implements the regulations and monitors and manages the outcomes for waste industry in NSW.
The NSW EPA’s Waste Levies generate about a $750 billion for the NSW government based on the collection of $151.60 per tonne in the metropolitan levy area (and $87.30 per tonne in the Regional Levy Area).
The original intent of the regulations were to reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill and to recover valuable resources that there being wasted and thrown away as rubbish.
To avoid the waste levy many waste businesses (especially the larger national companies) transported their waste interstate to avoid paying the levies. And thus started the dust-up started between the NSW EPA and “players” in the Waste industry. Often the “players” in the industry are the larger companies that participate in the EPA’s industry consultations. Across Australia there are between 1,600 and 2,000 waste companies and most of them are small businesses who don’t get a voice to the EPA. These smaller businesses are the ones that often offer bulk waste services (offering skip bins and hook-lift bins) to residential and construction customers.
The NSW EPA introduced a slew of changes to make it more difficult to transport waste and to crack down on recycling operators. There are limitations on the quantity of waste that recycling operators can process at their plants or depots. There are limitations on the stock or quantity of recycled materials that businesses can hold. These same businesses were force to install weighbridges and video monitoring to confirm the quantities of materials being accept, processed and stored and Waste Levies to pay on the recycled materials. The result was a significant increase in the cost of recycling construction materials (bricks, concrete and soil). Worst still this also led to recycling facilities closing down and leaving the marketplace.
One last item to throw into this toxic mixture for the waste industry; disposal sites. It seems that no one wants to be near a landfill or recycling plant and our city planners have little or no motivation to see such facilities located in their area or near their ratepayers properties. Yes, it is a nimby (Not In My Back Yard) subject. Nobody wants a landfill or recycling facility in their backyard. It can cost millions of dollars in planning, lawyers etc to open a recycling yard, even in an industrial area. Everyone fears the dust, smell, additional traffic associated with a recycling yard or landfill so the community will fight against it with little regard for what happens to there waste. Just look at Hunters Hill in Sydney’s inner west. Not a landfill or recycling facility within sight of its boundaries for the residents there. No they send their rubbish to someone else’s suburb without a second thought for those neighbours. Local Government has a role to play, they should pay for the privilege of a disposal free Local Government Area. They should apply to not only landfill facilities but to recycling facilities for green waste, construction waste and real recyclables like papers and plastics etc.
This opinion is based on my observations of the NSW waste industry over 12-years whilst working for www.binsskipswasteandrecycling.com.au We want to bring you the greatest choice of bulk waste services (Skip Bins) in you suburb and we don’t think you Government is help you.
