WASTE MANAGEMENT IN ACTION – ORGANICS
There’s been a strong political focus on organics in the past 18 months.
A watershed for organics recycling IT HAS BEEN A DIFFERENT 18 MONTHS THAN ANY OF US EXPECTED. FOR AUSTRALIAN ORGANICS RECYCLING IT HAS BEEN A PERIOD OF GROWTH AND STRENGTH IN THE MIDST OF A WIDER ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL STRUGGLE, WRITES PETER OLAH, AORA NATIONAL EXECUTIVE OFFICER.
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s everyday life has changed in many ways, Australians have developed a new-found appreciation for organics recycling. The result: record feedstock inputs, processing and product outputs (and sales) for many parts of the industry. Much of our industry’s latent production capacity has been taken up in that 18-month period. At the same time, we’ve moved from a state and national focus on recycling streams, which have been struggling and are now subject to export bans, to a policy and political focus on organics. The announcements have sounded right: shared targets for diversion from landfill and recycling of organics
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(generally 80 per cent by 2030), state and national bans on single-use plastics, new state recycling strategies with a strong focus on growing organics, and changes to regulatory rules to favour growth of organics recycling. We also saw major funding announcements in the 2021 Federal Budget, and also in several state budgets, most notably New South Wales. At the same time, the new National Soils Strategy was launched and funded, with several objectives significantly reliant on the products of organics recycling. So, all good then? Well, yes and no. In the midst of all this hopeful stuff, the usual problems persist. Many
AORA members are still bedevilled by ad-hoc decision-making and shortterm thinking from state government agencies and local councils. The strategic language and objectives are not always, and never consistently, reflected in the actions of governments. Nevertheless, we at AORA have been waiting and hoping for the announcement that would reflect the hard work behind the scenes: the ongoing efforts between AORA and the federal and state governments, and between the governments themselves. That announcement came on 28 September 2021: Ministers Sussan Ley MP and Trevor Evans MP released guidelines for the first national fund
