The State Government says it is continuing to drive improvements in Victoria’s recycling efforts after announcing an $11.5 million funding package.
A Leader study has found only 10 Melbourne councils are meeting targets set for 12 years ago to stop 50 per cent of their recyclable waste ending up at the tip.
State Environment and Climate Change Minister Ryan Smith said the latest funding package includes $5 million for Round 2 of the Driving Investment in New Recycling (DINR) fund, and $6.5 million for Resource Recovery Infrastructure (RRI) at landfills, which will target large scale projects.
Despite the landfill levy increasing by more than 1000 per cent in the past 10 years, the Auditor-General found last year that much of Victoria’s levy had previously been incorrectly used by Sustainability Victoria in areas such as climate change awareness programs.
Mr Smith insists that 100 per cent of the landfill levy is now used for its correct purpose.
“We are continuing our reinvestment of the landfill levy back into the waste management industry to improve our capacity to sort and recover resources that would otherwise be sent to landfill,” he said.
“This new funding package will help construct new facilities and upgrade existing infrastructure that makes sorting our waste at landfills or resource recovery centres more effective.
“Funding will be available to local government, private industry, waste management groups and non profit organisations working in recovery and recycling.
“We want to retrieve more material from the municipal waste stream and we want to help recover and process more of the commercial and industrial waste, such as cardboard, metals, plastics, glass, and timber that is going to waste in our landfills.”
The programs will be offered through a two-stage assessment process, an Expression of Interest (EOI) phase followed by a detailed application from successful EOI applicants.
The phase one EOI will open for applications in late July.
