Talk:Recycling in Australia

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• City of Wagga Wagga - 240L FOGO, 240L Recycling and 140L general waste bins.jpg

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Rebuilding this article

Hi everyone,

Over the past few days I have redone this article, adding new information and restructuring it. I have added sections on:

-History

  -Early recycling efforts (1920-1950)

  -Second wave of recycling (1970-2017)

  -Post operation national sword (2018-present)

-Incentives

  -Costs

  -Education

-Household

  -Recycling

    -Metals

    -Glass

    -Paper, cartons, and cardboard

    -Plastic

  -Food and garden organics

  -Hard rubbish collections

  -Drop off locations

    -Transfer stations

    -Store drop offs

    -Unconventional waste

      -Electronic waste

      -Soft plastics

      -Polystyrene

      -Batteries

      -Light bulbs

      -Automotive

      -Printer cartridges

      -Paint and chemicals

      -Coffee pods

      -Textiles

-Commercial and industrial

-Construction and demolition

Once completed, I also removed duplicate information from the article on Waste Management in Australia

Please feel free to add anymore information and expand on the work that I have already done. If you'd like to contribute, but don't know what to do, consider working on the history and expanding on and adding new topics in the unconventional waste section. HoHo3143 (talk) 06:48, 5 October 2022 (UTC)

The introduction focuses very much on household recycling, which is only a fraction of Australia's total recycling (13%), and I think it is incorrect to suggests that recycling isn't dominant given that we recycle 60% of Australia's waste, so I am going to expand the introduction to provide a greater overview of the nature of recycling in Australia. JenLouiseM (talk) 03:09, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

I note that the History section is very much focused on households, and could do with some additional attention given to recycling in C&I and C&D sectors (which currently makes up 87% of all recycling!) JenLouiseM (talk) 03:40, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

These sectors are lying to you. Nearly no recycled waste collected by domestic recycling is actually recycled outside of fiber and cans. Near enough to all plastics were previously "recycled" into Chinese landfills until China sword, subsequent to which they have been stockpiled eternally waiting for recycling methods that do not exist, either ending up in landfill or catching on fire while stockpiled. The little amount of plastic (aside from clear film) actually recycled is in fact repurposed, mostly in experimental methods by using it as filler in other products such as road base; all such attempts have proven to make more expensive, inferior products, and until landfill waste levys hit the thousands-of-dollars-per-ton levels they will remain uneconomical compared to simply tossing the plastic.

Industrial C&D sector "recycling" is the biggest lie the world has ever known and a scandal waiting to explode. A cursory examination of waste flows in and out of any "concrete recycling" facility will show that although it is common for them to report 90%+ diversion from landfill rates for their customers, nearly 70% of outflow is is bound for landfill. This gross overreporting of diversion is demanded by customers and thus supplied to customers. The reporting is often simply "made up" in office and has no relation to any actual data source. This is widely done to evade state waste levies, or meet unreasonable diversion targets set by government demo contracts.

Metal is the odd man out - as it is economically viable on its own without cheating, and so the industry widely doesn't need to cheat.

Unfortunately I am an original industry source - and can't give you a reference to use here as it's hardly going to be published info until it eventually breaks as an industry scandal, though it is difficult to see why it would when both the vendors and customers have a vested interest in maintaining the fictional diversion rates. It makes me angry though as a waste expert to read this article as it stands and to know it is 100% utter nonsense. 180.150.8.138 (talk) 22:41, 29 July 2024 (UTC)