from Gayle Sloan, CEO
Waste Levies: The Economic Lever Australia Cannot Ignore
Australia’s waste challenge is not a mystery. We are simply generating too much waste — and expecting the waste and resource recovery sector to solve a problem it did not create.
Recent commentary, including evidence presented to the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Proposed Energy from Waste Facilities, reinforces what our industry has said for years: if Australia is serious about transitioning to a circular economy, responsibility cannot sit solely at the end of the product lifecycle. It must sit with those who design, manufacture, market and profit from products in the first place.
That is why waste levies matter. Too often, the levy is framed as just another cost burden. It is not. A well-designed waste levy is one of the most powerful economic levers governments have to drive behaviour change across the entire materials and product chain.
When levies are set appropriately, they push material up the waste management hierarchy — away from landfill and toward avoidance, reuse, repair, recycling and recovery. When levies are too low, inconsistent between jurisdictions, or disconnected from broader policy settings, landfill remains the cheapest and easiest option.
And right now, in much of Australia, it still is.
The economics are straightforward. It costs significantly more to collect, sort, process and remanufacture materials than it does to bury them. Since COVID, construction costs alone have increased by more than 30%, alongside major increases in labour, fuel and energy costs. Yet in many jurisdictions, levy rates have not kept pace with those increases.
The reality is simple: without a strong and consistent levy signal, the market will continue to favour landfill over resource recovery. That is not a circular economy. It is managed waste growth.
WMRR has consistently advocated for stronger economic and regulatory levers that keep materials circulating in the economy for as long as possible. The waste levy is central to that framework. But it must be designed to drive real behaviour change — not simply raise revenue. Last year alone, waste levies generated around $2 billion in revenue.
Levy must also be nationally coherent. Vast differences in settings between states create exactly the wrong incentives: transporting waste across borders to the cheapest landfill destination rather than investing in local recovery infrastructure and markets.
Australia still lacks an integrated national materials policy framework linking product design, manufacturing, consumption and end-of-life management. Instead, the financial burden falls on local government, the waste and resource recovery sector, and ultimately the community.
The path forward is clear. We need waste levies that genuinely drive behaviour change, with transparent reinvestment into recovery infrastructure, market development and innovation; nationally consistent regulatory frameworks; stronger product stewardship and circular design requirements; and mandatory government procurement and recycled content policies.
As state budgets and new waste strategies approach, 2026 must be the year governments stop managing waste at the margins and start building the economic framework required for a genuinely circular economy.