Report 3: 2020-21

Waste Management – Service Delivery

Audit finding – Wider uptake of existing better practice waste management methods could be key to improving waste recovery

Across WA, LG entities do not use consistent and regular waste education and behaviour change programs to encourage the community to reduce waste

There is no regular and consistent messaging by LG entities on waste avoidance, resource recovery and appropriate waste disposal behaviours across WA. LG entities and other waste managers in the sector have produced a variety of waste education materials, often with slightly different messages. For example, in our sampled LG entities:

  • Bunbury provide annual waste and recycling guides with detailed images and text on bin usage. This includes removing lids from plastic bottles and glass jars, and ensuring they are clean before placing in recycling bins.
  • Broome provides limited guidance on their website, which does not include graphics or any directions to remove lids or wash containers.

Inconsistent messaging across the State may have contributed to a poor understanding of how to dispose of waste correctly, increasing the risk of contamination and causing more recyclable materials to end up in landfill. Using regular and consistent waste education, with clear messages, is key to improving waste recovery.

Bin tagging behaviour change programs to encourage correct waste disposal are readily available, but few of the State’s approximately 100 LG entities that offer kerbside recycling services use them. In September 2019, WALGA advised that only 11 Perth and Peel and 10 regional LG entities had used its Waste Authority funded bin tagging program, which is available to all LG entities and is a simple method used across Australia to improve waste disposal behaviour. WALGA advised that additional LG entities have expressed interest in using the program, subject to funding availability. A comprehensive bin tagging program includes a combination of bin tags (Figure 5) to provide direct feedback on the content of waste, recycling and organic bins, information about what should go in each bin, on-site bin audits, and incentives and enforcement actions to reduce bin contamination. WALGA’s bin tagging program in a sample of 3 LG entities over a 6-week period in 2016 showed some positive results:

  • through bin audits, 2 LG entities with 2-bin systems showed an increase in the proportion of households that used their recycling bins correctly, from 44% to 64%, and 64% to 76%
  • the other LG entity had a 3-bin system and recorded a smaller increase in the correct use of both recycling and organic waste bins, rising from 84% to 91%
  • routinely using behaviour change programs such as bin tagging, can improve community understanding of appropriate waste disposal.

Source: WALGA

Figure 5: Examples of bin tags for FOGO bins

Community members put many things in their bins, including hazardous wastes such as batteries, paint and gas bottles. One of our sampled LG entities advised that its waste contractor had experienced 6 incidents of fire in their trucks in a 6-month period due to hazardous waste contamination. This highlights the importance of bin tagging or similar behaviour change programs, along with easy to access disposal options for household hazardous waste and regular and consistent education to effectively decrease bin contamination and prevent harm to the public or environment.

Uptake of the State’s messaging to promote consistent waste education is poor

The Waste Authority first produced its WasteSorted toolkit in 2018 to help all LG entities communicate consistently with their residents on how to dispose of waste correctly and decrease bin contamination. However, the 7 LG entities audited do not use it. They advised that the toolkit, which the Waste Authority updated in 2019, lacked useful detail households need to reduce bin contamination. Instead, the LG entities developed their own education materials (Table 4) or used those supplied by their regional councils or private waste contractors, some of which were developed prior to 2018. LG entities require flexibility to develop educational materials, but maintaining consistency in messaging can help avoid confusion to ensure the community disposes waste correctly. The Waste Authority advised that 14 LG entities that applied for Better Bins Plus: Go FOGO funding in 2020 have indicated that they will use elements of the WasteSorted toolkit. The Waste Authority also plans to launch a state-wide waste campaign in August 2020, targeting waste avoidance, and improved recycling and recovery.

Sources: Waste Authority, LG entity

Table 4: A sample of waste and recycling bin education materials

To help address the inconsistent messaging from LG entities, WALGA formed the Consistent Communication Collective in 2019. The group provides an avenue for State and LG entities to work with industry partners. It aims to produce clear and consistent messages in education campaigns. LG entities have scope to tailor the WasteSorted toolkit to meet their local community’s needs. However, the State still has a key role to play to ensure that entities work together to produce consistent, evidence-based and regular waste communications throughout WA, and to promote a shared responsibility to avoid and recover more waste.

LG adoption of the 3-bin FOGO system is limited, even though reprocessing organic material can significantly increase waste recovery

Few LG entities had the capacity to quickly adopt a 3-bin FOGO system to improve organic waste recovery following the introduction of the Waste Strategy 2030. In Australia, around 50% of household waste is food and garden organic materials, which presents an opportunity to recover a substantial proportion of waste. Only 3 of the 33 Perth and Peel LG entities were using the 3-bin FOGO system by the end of 2019. Another 8 had an existing 2-bin waste and recycling system but agreed to adopt the 3-bin FOGO system in 2020. The Waste Strategy 2030 identified using the better practice 3-bin FOGO system as a priority for Perth and Peel LG entities to increase the recovery of household waste.

According to a combination of WALGA and LG entity feedback, and media reports, over half of the Perth and Peel LG entities were unlikely to swap to the 3-bin FOGO system in 2020. Of these LG entities:

  • 7 already provided a 3-bin garden organic (GO) system but did not collect food scraps, which can contribute around 35% of household waste. Many of these LG entities used State funding from the Better Bins program from 2014 to 2019, which offered a contribution of $30 per household to LG entities to purchase a new third bin for either GO or FOGO. The transition from GO to FOGO does not require purchase of an additional kerbside bin, although it is likely to require a change in processing system for the organic waste, including to manage additional odour and leachate. In addition, LG entities may need to apply to DWER for a change in waste facility licensing
  • the remaining 15 had a 2-bin system, but preferred to use an alternative waste treatment facility to remove organic waste from the waste bin or had plans to send waste to a waste-to-energy facility when commissioned. For example:
    • a Perth and Peel LG entity advised us it chose to retain a 2-bin system, instead investing in behaviour change to reduce bin contamination and encourage home composting, and would eventually use a waste-to-energy facility to dispose of residual waste, consistent with the previous waste strategy. The LG entity indicated that it can take 2 to 5 years to review an existing approach, engage with the community on options that consider environmental, social and economic outcomes, conduct technical assessments, and prioritise resources for significant investment in infrastructure and community education
    • a MRC LG entity stated that it would retain a 2-bin system, as landfill was cheaper, compared to the high costs to implement a 3-bin FOGO system and transport materials to recycling markets (including compost to potential agricultural markets that are rare in their region).

Some of these LG entities raised additional concerns about swapping to the 3-bin FOGO system, which included:

  • limited ability to produce compost that meets Australian Standards due to high levels of contamination
  • high costs to ratepayers for bin roll-out and ongoing education as the State’s contribution does not fully cover these costs
  • lack of space for additional bins in commercial areas and multiple unit dwellings
  • future commitments to provide a set minimum annual tonnage of waste that includes recyclable organic material to a waste-to-energy facility.

Experience from other Australian states and within WA has shown that adoption of the 3-bin FOGO system increases the chance that LG entities will meet the Waste Strategy 2030 targets more easily.

The abundance of food and garden organic waste makes adoption of the 3-bin FOGO system an effective method to minimise waste and re-use valuable materials. In 2017, the Australian Government’s National Food Waste Strategy estimated that $20 billion was lost to the Australian economy each year through food waste. Australian households lost over $2,200 a year by wasting food and the commercial and industrial sectors wasted 2.2 million tonnes of food each year. According to Sustainability Victoria[1], LG entities using a 3-bin GO system can recover 40-55% of waste while those using a 3-bin FOGO system can recover 60-70%.

Once suitable infrastructure for collection, transport and processing, and end markets are available, the recovery of FOGO will significantly reduce waste to landfill. It will also help further protect the environment by freeing up landfill space, and reducing landfill emissions of methane and carbon dioxide from decomposing organic waste. Using the 3-bin FOGO system to separate organic waste to produce compost can provide fertiliser to enrich the nutrient poor soils of WA and will keep valuable resources productive in the circular economy.

The State first encouraged LG entities to adopt a 3-bin system through its Better Bins pilot program in 2014. The program offered LG entities a total of $7.5 million to contribute to the purchase of bins that met the State’s Better Bins Kerbside Collection Program Guidelines, which included flexibility to collect GO or FOGO. However, LG entities applied for less than half the funds because they regarded the extra costs required to change as prohibitive. The State introduced the revised Better Bins Plus: Go FOGO program in 2020 following the launch of the Waste Strategy 2030, which contributes up to $25 per household. It offers further funding of $20 million over 6 years to encourage LG entities across WA to swap to the 3-bin FOGO system, separating both food and garden organics. This does not cover the full costs to support effective rollout of a 3-bin FOGO system.

LG entities rarely use financial incentives to avoid or reduce waste

Most LG entities charge fixed annual rates regardless of the amount and type of waste households and commercial premises produce, giving no financial incentives for individual households and commercial premises to reduce their waste. We identified only 2 examples of LG entities that provide significant incentives for the community to minimise waste. Bunbury charges ratepayers less for smaller size bins and Cambridge does not charge for the yellow-lid recycling bins. Some LG entities offer other less significant incentives to avoid waste production, such as:

  • subsidies for purchase of home compost buckets
  • community workshops on sustainable living, composting and worm farming.

A Parliamentary inquiry into the Waste and Recycling Industry in Australia in 2018 noted that LG entities could introduce weight-based charging to allow ratepayers to reduce their rates. For example, South Korea introduced a weight-based ‘pay-as-you-throw’ charge on food waste in 2013. The country now recycles over 95% of its food waste, up from less than 2% in 1995. LG entities can consider financial incentives to increase waste recovery and further contribute to meeting the State’s waste recovery targets.

Bulk waste can be recycled but often ends up in landfill

A large proportion of bulk vergeside waste is recyclable (Figure 7), yet LG entities often take it straight to landfill. We found variation across the LG entities, with some making significant efforts to recycle and some using landfill to dispose of all their bulk waste. For example, in 2018-19, Bunbury did not recycle its collected vergeside bulk waste. In the same year, Belmont reported recovering 31% of 3,562 tonnes of vergeside bulk waste by recycling steel, cardboard, wood, green waste and mattresses. Recycling these materials, along with timber and electronic goods, presents an opportunity for LG entities to increase their recovery rates and is better for the environment.

Source: OAG

Figure 7: Bulk bin and vergeside bulk waste collection by LG entities

In the absence of State guidance, WALGA developed Better Practice Vergeside Collection Guidelines and suggested that LG entities should aim to recycle 50% of collected bulk waste. All 33 Perth and Peel LG entities offered bulk vergeside or bulk bin waste collections in 2017-18. However of these:

  • 6 sent all their bulk waste to landfill
  • only 4 recycled 50% or more and met WALGA’s target
  • the remaining 23 recycled an average of 20% of collected bulk waste.

All 5 MRCs offered bulk waste collections and around two-thirds of the smaller regional LG entities offered drop-off facilities instead. Recycling bulk rubbish will assist all LG entities to contribute to the Waste Strategy 2030 recovery targets and reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfill.

[1] Sustainability Victoria (2017). Changing Behaviours to Improve the Rollout of a New Kerbside Organics Collection Service.

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