Australia is currently facing waste management issue as one of the main challenges. For instance, waste production has tripled over the last few years and unless proper waste management legislations are adopted, it will even be a bigger problem in future. Up to 44 million tones of wastes were produced in Australia between the years 2001 and 2006.
This figure represented a 31% rise in waste production. The latter explains the reason why Australia is currently undertaking rapid and significant reforms in waste management. The reform agenda on how to management the growing waste production is taking place at the local government, state and commonwealth levels.
Although the territorial and state governments have been on the forefront in waste disposal, it is interesting to note that the challenges being posed by waste production are being addressed at the national level. In other words, waste disposal is no longer a preserve and concern of the local authorities.
The federal government is playing an active role in ensuring that the vast amounts of wastes produced are managed efficiently. As a matter of fact, the national government has so far envisioned the need to embrace waste management systems that are less complex and uniform across the board. The levy system in waste management has also been made standard in order to ease the entire process.
In addition, international conventions have been found to be critical towards waste management and therefore, the federal government is insisting on the importance of complying with such international standards. Nonetheless, waste management and disposal is still a critical role of the local government authorities in Australia.
This paper offers an in-depth discussion of the reform measures that are currently being undertaken in Australia in regards to waste management. From the discussion in the paper, it is truly evident that the current legislation in Australia for managing wastes is effective.
Background: waste management at the national level
As it stands now, there are quite a number of treaties, international conventions and laws that have been ratified by Australia in order to be in tandem with the best practices in waste management procedures.
Some of the ratifications include the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. Some of the pieces of legislations that have been adopted at the federal level in order to strengthen the aforementioned conventions include the National Environment Protection (Assessment of Site Contamination) Measure 1999 and the Hazardous Waste (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act 1989 (Wilkinson et al. 2007, p.156)
In the past few decades, waste management reforms have been a major agenda of the Commonwealth as discussed in the following sections.
The Hazardous Waste Act
The obligations posed by the Basel convention could not have been easily fulfilled in the absence of pertinent legislations. This is why the federal government adopted the Hazardous Waste Act in 1989 so as to ratify the convention (Zaman 2012, p.1462). Moreover, the Act made it possible for the Australian government to control waste production by adjusting the volumes of imports and exports.
Although this Act has been instrumental over the years, it is presently being reviewed with the aim of strengthening its provisions for effective waste management. After the Act has been reviewed, it will probably be more effective in tackling the current waste management challenges bearing in mind that additional penalties and enforcement powers will definitely be introduced.
Furthermore, the review will create the best opportunity for clarifying all the past contracts and international conventions that have been adopted so far. For instance, the issue of free trade agreements is highly likely to surface during the review process.
Enforcement agents
The National Environment Protection Measures are currently being implemented by several enforcement and legislative government agencies in Australia. A case example is the Standing Council on Environment and Water (SCEW). In addition, the Council of Australian Governments is also a proactive government agent that foresees environmental protection especially through proper waste disposal.
These agencies have done profound job in articulating environmental issues. For instance, the Australia-wide environmental regulatory practices as well as the seamless environmental regulations are some of the key areas of concern that these agencies have addressed. These are priority areas that are also in line with waste production and effective waste management (Qian & Burritt 2007, p.148).
Another priority area that has been flagged by SCEW is the establishment of a national waste program that eases down the ability of waste producing companies to comply with the stated provisions. It is also worth to mention that there is a National Waste Policy proposal that SCEW is presently considering to use.
The policy will soon be ready since the Council of Australian Governments endorsed it three years ago. An extended producer stability plan and program for supporting product stewardship are some of the core provisions of the National Waste Policy. In any case, the Australian Packaging Covenant is one of the products of the policy.
The National Environment Protection Measure on Used Packaging Materials is one of the key underpinnings of the Australian Packaging Covenant (Sinha et al. 2002, p.264). All the guidelines of the national environment protection should be adhered to by signatories of the aforementioned covenant.
However, the implementation of this covenant is executed uniquely with the respective states because they are part and parcel of the covenant. As much as this covenant is not a mandatory scheme at the moment, there are vast possibilities that other compulsory schemes will be ushered in the near future to address effective waste management procedures.
Waste reforms at the state/territorial level
The commitments put forward by the Commonwealth in regards to waste management (such as emissions of chemicals) are executed by both the territories and the states. Furthermore, waste management policies are also being reformed by the individual states (Dummett 2006, p. 381).
For example, Victoria and NSW states have their own waste management polices that are reviewed on a regular basis. The state and territorial authorities have been encouraging businesses to stick to effective waste management measures so that the state government may find it less complicated to oversee the overall process. There are myriads of reforms that have been undertaken by both states toward waste management programs.
The levy to be charged on waste and environmental management in New South Wales was reviewed by KPMG under the directive of Hon. Robyn Parker who was the minister for environment in 2012. Before the levy could be put in place, the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 was adopted (White & Heckenberg 2011, p.1260).
The main purpose of the levy was to enhance the avoidance of waste as well as enhance the process of recovering wastes generated from both domestic and industrial establishments.
In order to make this Act operational, a financial disincentive was created towards individuals and companies that dispatch wastes to landfills. In spite of the positive attributes of the levy, it has recently been criticized because it tends to promote unlawful dumping, leads to poor revenue allocation, and it is also quite costly because wastes are carried over long distances.
In spite of these limitations, the recycling rates have been remarkably improved in the New South Wales State. For example, up to 63% of generated wastes were recycled by businesses and individuals in NSW between 2010 and 2011. This represented a significant rise of about 20% in waste recycling that took place between the year 2002 and 2003 (Zutshi & Sohal 2003, p.641).
A waste-energy policy was yet another waste levy review recommendation from KPMG. This policy was drafted in the first quarter of 2013 with the aim of offering alternatives of transforming waste products from homes and industries to energy. This could be attained by treating wastes in a thermal manner.
Hence, the use of unclean sources of energy will be significantly reduced. In addition, landfills as well as the emission of greenhouse gases will be minimized when this draft policy is adopted. Recovered waste oil, uncontaminated wood waste and biomass from agriculture are some of the eligible waste fuels that have been shortlisted for consideration.
In the case of the Victorian waste management reforms, an advanced form of technology has already been proposed by the state government. The main purpose of this technology is to convert waste products into viable sources of energy just as it is the situation with the New South Wales (Worthington & Dollery 2001, p.236). Another option could be to produce fuels from the domestic and industrial wastes.
The Towards Zero policy will soon be replaced by the draft Victorian waste policy which has proposed several measures of curtailing both the production and disposal of waste products. The draft Victorian waste policy suggests that environmental protection in terms of waste management can only be sustained through advanced technology in waste conversion. The policy articulates several positive outcomes that will be generated when a new technological platform is adopted.
This approach will definitely present a paradigm shift in waste management bearing in mind that for a long time, Victoria has been employing conventional waste management methods such as reusing or recycling. This policy is also keen on a long term initiative for waste management.
The initiative is expected to span over a period of three decades. Some of the long term objectives include lowering the risk of exposure to wastes, minimizing unlawful dumping of waste products as well as reckless littering, and constant review of the legislative frameworks that have been put in place in order to boost resource recovery process and improve waste disposal (Burritt 2002, p.391).
On a final note, it is also imperative to explore waste management implications for businesses. There are possibilities that the Federal government will in future increase intervention measures on waste management so that the country can be in a position to manage its wastes at the level of international standards. From the above discussion, it can be seen that the current legislative measures in Australia on waste management are indeed very effective in tackling the challenge.
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