Some of Sydney’s poorer areas are recycling at more than double the rate of other suburbs and far outperforming many of city’s more affluent addresses.
The Office of Environment and Heritage reports that Liverpool, Camden, Campbelltown and Penrith recovered more than two-thirds of their household waste in the last financial year, as did Hunters Hill and Willoughby.
Botany Bay proved to be Sydney’s worst performing local government area, recovering just 24 per cent, followed by Auburn and Rockdale.
The state’s largest council, the City of Sydney, was far behind Sydney’s best recyclers, recording a recovery rate of 47.8 per cent for 2010-11.
Outside Sydney, Wollongong had a household recycling rate of 52.4 per cent in 2010-11, Newcastle lagged at 30.8 per cent.
Liverpool Council was Sydney’s best recycler, diverting 70.5 per cent of its household waste from landfill in the same period. Before 2009, its rate was just 15.39 per cent.
The turnaround in Liverpool since 2009 is because 50 per cent of the waste from the council’s non-reycling bins has been diverted from landfill to an alternative waste treatment facility at Kemps Creek.
Council also switched to a three-bin collection that year.
The NSW Environment Protection Authority estimates more than 40 per cent of household waste placed in the regular waste bins for kerbside collections is organic material and almost 22 per cent recyclable material that has been placed in the wrong bin.
The authority’s director of waste strategy and program delivery, Steve Beaman, said landfill was still the cheaper option for most councils than waste treatment facilities, which process 23 per cent (372,707 tonnes) of the state’s total non-recycling bin waste.
The balance was expected to shift around 2013-14 due to the rising cost of the waste levy, which is $82.20 a tonne in Sydney, or $95.20 a tonne from next month. Sending waste to treatment facilities costs councils about $200 a tonne, compared to a landfill gate fee of about $180 a tonne, which rises as the levy goes up each year.
”Do you want to go expensive landfill, or do you want a cheaper alternative, which is the recycling facilities?” Mr Beaman said.
Sydney households generated more than 1.7 million tonnes of waste in 2010-11, 885,988 tonnes of which was recycled.
But the chairman of the Australian Landfill Owners Association, Colin Sweet, said finding a proven technology for an alternative waste treatment facility was difficult. Planning approval took about six years, and funding was needed from the outset.
He said successful treatment centres did go some way to improving recycling rates. NSW aims to recover 66 per cent of its municipal solid waste by 2014. The recovery rate stood at 44 per cent when last calculated in 2008-09.
Mr Beaman said NSW was on track to reach this target.
But Jeff Angel, the national convener of the Boomerang Alliance, an organisation of environment groups dedicated to achieving zero waste, said there was not enough investment in infrastructure such as alternative waste treatment facilities or collection systems to ensure the target would be reached.
”It’s quite hard to put that infrastructure in place in such a short period,” he said.
