About 320,000 tonnes of bottles, cans and other containers appear to have gone missing from the national recycling inventory, according to environmental groups who have compared industry data with a new government report.
The huge haul of used metal, glass and plastic - more than six times the estimated weight of the Sydney Harbour Bridge - is the difference between the official recycling figures produced by food and beverage makers and the amount actually processed at recycling stations each year.
The industry, led by the Australian Food and Grocery Council and industry body the Australian Packaging Covenant, disputes the findings. They say that 52 per cent of beverage containers were recycled in Australia last financial year, an improvement on previous years.
But the analysis by the Boomerang Alliance, a broad coalition of environment groups, puts the recycling figure at 38 per cent when imported items are taken into account, with much of the remainder being sent into landfill sites or ending up as litter.
“Recent industry and government data shows a black hole in reports from the Australian Packaging Covenant,” the Boomerang Alliance’s national convenor, Jeff Angel, said.
”We estimate that over 320,000 tonnes of used packaging is missing, meaning the [covenant] is even further away from achieving its target of 65 per cent, which was supposed to be reached in 2010.”
The figures are based on new reports jointly commissioned by state and federal environment ministers and the Packaging Stewardship Forum, an industry group.
“The data confirms beverage containers are our biggest problem, with only 38 per cent recycled, some 10 per cent less than previously claimed,” Mr Angel said.
”This means eight billion containers are being littered or landfilled in Australia every year - or 21 million per day - a dreadful waste.”
The Australian Food and Grocery Council said there was no ”black hole” in the data, and the methodology used by the alliance was misleading because it focused on beverage containers and not all waste, much of which has higher recycling rates.
“The benchmarking [Packaging Stewardship Forum] report, completed in November 2011, found 52 per cent of beverage containers were recycled nationally in 2010-11 - not the 38 per cent claimed by the Boomerang Alliance,” the council’s chief executive, Kate Carnell, said. ”These figures do not include stockpiled materials in storage facilities.”
The Australian Packaging Covenant also rejected the Boomerang Alliance figures and said on current trends 70 per cent of materials would be recycled by 2015.
The fight around the accurate measurement of recycling comes before a government decision on recycling to come in June, in which ministers will announce their position on a national ”cash for cans” style recycling scheme.
The Boomerang Alliance favours a plan to put a 10 cent return price on used containers, but the food, beverage and packaging industries prefer the current self-regulatory approach.
