Australia faces deepening recycling crisis as India bans plastic waste imports
Australia’s waste crisis is set to escalate, with India this month completely banning plastic waste imports a year after China’s drastic restrictions sent shockwaves through the recycling industry. India was the fourth-largest destination for Australia’s waste in December 2018, taking 13 per cent of its total waste exports.
The Australian Council of Recycling has warned that with Asian markets closing down and some councils already sending their kerbside recycling to landfill, recycling was "greatly under threat".
"We are back to where we started with the China crisis, but worse because we have fewer alternative markets," the council's chief executive Peter Shmigel said. Australia’s waste exports to China declined by 41 per cent last financial year.
It led to the hazardous stockpiling of recyclable material, while rubbish collectors scrambled to find alternative overseas markets. Countries including India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia offset the decline in waste exports to China by taking more of Australia’s recyclable rubbish. Overall, Australia’s waste exports actually increased by 5 per cent last financial year.
But an analysis of Australia’s waste exports commissioned by the Department of the Environment and Energy warned several other Asian countries were reviewing their policies.
It said Malaysia and Thailand had since announced a ban on plastic waste imports by 2021 and others were taking immediate action to tighten controls on imports.
"If Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand enacted waste import bans similar to China’s, Australia would need to find substitute domestic or export markets for approximately 1.29 million tonnes (or $530 million) of waste a year, based on 2017-18 export amounts," the analysis says.
Posted by admin
on Mar 31 2019. Filed under No Plastic.
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