Frequently Asked Questions
1. How is general household waste managed
in Australia?
General household waste (also called mixed solid waste or putrescible waste)
is usually disposed of in a landfill.
SITA Environmental Solutions owns and operates five landfills in Sydney.
For more information on what happens at these landfills please refer to
our Easy Guide booklet:
Landfills - What You Need to Know
(PDF, 879kB).
Some mixed solid waste is sent to alternative waste technology (AWT) facilities,
which are designed to process mixed solid waste to recover valuable resources.
See question 6 and 7 below for more information on AWTs.
2. How much mixed solid waste is sent to landfill each year?
In 2002 around 22.45 million tonnes of waste went to landfill across the
country. In 2002-2003 approximately 6.34 million tonnes were disposed of
in NSW landfills, making us one of the highest waste producers in the world
per head of population. Please refer to site
specific information booklets
to find out how much mixed solid waste is sent to SITA's landfills.
3. How can we reduce the amount of waste that ends up in a landfill?
There are simple and easy ways you can reduce the amount of waste you send
to landfill:
- Avoid making waste – By not buying things we can live without, we avoid creating more waste and save money too. If we use fewer products now, there will be less waste later.
- Shop wisely – Buy recycled products and products that can be recycled. Buy only what you need and goods with little or no packaging.
- Doing the 3Rs – Reduce, reuse and recycle. On average over 80% of what we throw away can be recycled and/or reused eg garden organics and food scraps can be recycled by having a home compost or worm farm.
- Dispose of items responsibly and appropriately – There are some items, such as car batteries and household chemicals, that should not go in the mixed solid waste bin because they can contaminate our groundwater and endanger human health.
4. What steps have been taken to minimise waste going to landfill?
The following are just a few examples of actions that have been put in place to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill:
- Recycling
Most councils in Australia provide recycling bins for households and some also provide green waste (garden organics) bins. These wastes can be recycled and (re)processed into new products. By using these bins you can reduce the volume of waste going into your general household garbage bin, which means less of your waste goes into landfill.
- Alternative Waste Technologies
- Education
- Extended Producer Responsibility
For example, the industry association for agricultural and veterinary chemical manufacturers (Avcare) and the National Farmers’ Federation have developed and implemented a scheme called ChemClear to collect and safely dispose of unwanted chemicals. Another example is mobile phone batteries – they can be returned to manufacturers to be recycled.
EPR schemes have been implemented in other countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
5. What are the effects of landfills on the environment and public health?
Some of the potential environmental and public health issues related to landfill management include:
- Water contamination
- Greenhouse gas emissions
- Dust and odour
- Noise
- Litter
Modern landfills are designed and engineered to receive waste such that, with good management, risks to the environment and public health are minimised significantly. For example:
- Gas produced from SITA's landfills is collected and converted into renewable energy, minimising greenhouse gas emissions;
- All waterways around our sites are monitored and water run off from sites is collected and treated to prevent water contamination;
- We cover the waste at the end of each day to reduce litter around the site and dust is suppressed by spraying water (collected in storm water dams) on site roads; and
- We have also developed an in-house program to monitor gases and accurately pinpoint odour sources at the site. This means odour sources can be identified quickly and action can be taken to deal with the cause of the problem.
For more information about how our landfills are managed please refer to our Easy Guide booklet: Landfills What You Need to Know (PDF, 879kB).
6. Are there other ways to manage mixed solid waste in Sydney?
SITA Environmental Solutions is focused on offering a range of choices to manage waste sustainably and treat it as a valuable resource. For example through the use of facilities that use alternative waste technologies (AWT) we can treat garbage as a rich resource of material for recycling and renewal.
For more information on our AWTs please refer to our Macarthur Resource Recovery Park Fact Sheets and Easy Guide booklet: Maximising Recovery Minimising Impact (PDF, 230kB).
7. What is alternative waste technology (AWT)?
AWT describes a technology that diverts waste from landfill, recovers more resources from the waste stream and minimises the impact on the environment. It is “alternative” because it offers a more sustainable solution than waste disposal methods such as landfills and incineration. The technology can include mechanical separation methods, biological processes, thermal technologies and mechanical and biological treatment.
For more information on alternative waste technology, please refer to the Alternative Waste Technology fact sheet.
8. How is asbestos waste managed?
SITA Environmental Solutions accepts asbestos waste at Belrose, Eastern Creek and Lucas Heights. The asbestos needs to be packaged prior to disposal at our sites due to the health risks associated with its handling. A booking is required at least one business day prior to disposal because careful handling of the waste is required when unloading the asbestos on site to prevent the release of dust. Greater supervision is required, and the waste is compacted by machinery only after it has been covered with a layer of general waste.
For more information, please refer to What To Do With: Asbestos.
9. How are other types of waste managed in Australia?
Generally:
- Dry waste such as treated timber and bubble wrap are usually disposed of in an inert waste landfill;
- Liquid waste such as mixed oils, solvents from chemical laboratories are treated in liquid treatment plants;
- Medical waste such unused medicines, tissue samples from testing laboratories, contaminated containers are treated in a number of ways, such as incineration, autoclave, and microwave technology; and
- Hazardous waste is treated in a number of ways depending on what type of hazardous waste is being disposed of. Landfill is not an option for hazardous waste.
Throughout Australia there are various recycling programs for recyclable materials such as plastic containers, aluminium cans, glass bottles and jars, paper, cardboard and steel cans to be collected and processed. There are also programs to recover and recycle garden organics into mulch, compost and other soil conditioning products.
SITA Environmental Solutions owns and operates three Materials Recycling Facilities (MRFs) in NSW.
For more information about how a MRF works please refer to our Easy Guide booklet: MRF The Why What and How (PDF, 922kB).
We also accept garden organics at our facilities and for more information on how we process garden organics, please refer to our Easy Guide booklet: How We Recover Garden Organics (PDF, 1MB).
10. What are the benefits of recycling?
- Recycling conserves our natural resources because products that are recyclable can be turned into new products with little to no use of raw materials from the Earth.
- Recycling reduces the amount of pollution that results from making products such as paper, aluminium, steel, plastics and glass.
- Recycling reduces the amount of energy and water used during the manufacturing process when compared to the use of raw materials.
- Recycling saves landfill space.
- Recycling helps organisations save money on their waste disposal costs.
By recycling, each year NSW households are:
- Saving 2,654 Olympic sized swimming pools of water;
- Saving 2005 Giga-Watt hours of energy, which is equivalent to powering 334,000 homes; and
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 55,000 cars off the road permanently.
For more information on the benefits of recycling click here.
Sources:
NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water
