As of 1 September 2023, South Australia banned plastic pizza tables, Queensland axed plastic-stemmed cotton buds and Western Australia outlawed those large plastic political posters which go up on power poles at election time.

You might think if we were talking about banning items like these, we were about to declare victory in the war on waste.

Well, far from it, sadly.

Focusing our energy on plastic-stemmed cotton buds, pizza tables and political posters while Australia generates 76 million tonnes of waste a year risks looking like fiddling while Rome burns.

Of those 76 million tonnes, over one third goes into landfill – and my bet is those items mentioned that were prohibited this month make up a very small amount of this and would be truly negligible in weight.

We are not raising this to belittle these policies or actions, but rather to highlight that Australia will not reach the 80 per cent resource recovery target set by all governments by banning pizza tables when we need to remove 10  million tonnes more of material out of landfill in seven years.

We understand each state wants to flex its muscles and say “I’m greener than the lot next door” – and of course there’s a place for that.  

And yes, the waste and resource recovery industry welcomes any move to reduce our reliance on single-use items including plastic, but the best answer to address the material challenge Australia faces is through a nationally consistent approach.

This shouldn’t be just to plastic, but all material streams – with the ultimate aim of reducing waste and creating certainty for the community and business.  

One-off bans in certain states not only creates confusion for communities, but also real inefficiencies for business – particularly when this action is so often targeted at trivial things which will not make any real impact.

We are a single market – time to start behaving that way Australia is a single market and all states should move consistently as such. 

The missed opportunity here by the states in banning these items was the conversation that we desperately need with the community about consumption. 

The conversation that says – do we need this? Can it be avoided? Are there alternatives? If so, ideally re-use ones. The conversation we really need is about overusing raw materials (particularly those that we use only once).

We really need to have change behaviour to avoid all single use materials, to support innovation in re-use and extend the life of resources. 

Avoidance of creating waste is the best possible thing we can do, and these bans help that (do we really need pizza tables at all?), but the time spent on these bans, and the rabbit holes we run down to identify what to ban, as opposed to why are we banning, come at the expense of actions which would make a real difference.

The waste and resource recovery industry needs to be supported to add 10  million tonnes of infrastructure processing capacity and matching markets for our materials in seven years if we are meet government targets.

This can only be achieved by increased demand for recycled materials led by all governments across Australia and the development of more world class onshore facilities with fast-tracked, yet complete, approval processes. We also need to combine this with the confidence that a market will exist for the recycled material the facilities generate. 

This needs a national commitment to streamline planning processes – not to cut corners – but to enable quick and efficient delivery of this essential infrastructure.

And it requires a clear regulatory framework which will force generators of waste to design for extended life, and for the ability to recycle and then use this material as remanufactured content.

This is not only good for the environment; it is good for Australian jobs.

This article was published in The Fifth Estate on 12 September 2023.