We Australians generate a lot of waste and in the past it either went to landfills or it was shipped overseas for processing. The technology exists to turn waste into productive raw materials for industry. China was the main destination, but in 2018 Chins imposed restrictions and so did Taiwan, Malaysia India and Thailand. Our unwanted waste if piling up in Australia. We are in danger of drowning in a sea of our own rubbish.
Trying to extricate our economy from the damage caused by this coronavirus has made job creation urgent and both the Federal and state governments have contributed to a plan to deal with this waste problem in Australia. Six hundred million dollars have been set aside to create the necessary waste conversion plant and it is calculated that this will deliver about ten thousand new jobs in a completely new industry.
When this waste goes to landfills it involves three people to put it in the ground. The recycling to make usable raw material for industry would expand that to ten jobs and create a new range of professional skills. This would take waste processing up the scale from unskilled labouring to the trained levels necessary to operate a sophisticated new industry.
The technology now exists to turn waste into high value raw material which is safe for human health and the environment. That waste we have been exporting overseas has been so processed and usually returns to this country as finished products. It is surprising how many commonly used items are actually constructed from waste that has been reconstructed back to the state of the same raw material we mine from the ground.
Work is about to start to build a new recycling plant in Albury, on the New South Wales and Victorian border. It makes sense to draw the waste from the two sources of high density population on each side of that border and Albury has both the road and rail connection to deliver the newly created raw material to industry in the eastern states.
It will be in the interests of the Australian economy for both the Federal and the state governments to persuade industry to convert to using raw material generated by waste processing. There will be the usual inertia to resist change but the advent of this pandemic has shaken the industrial structure to the extent that change is now necessary for the survival of many industries.
Both the money and the intent are being concentrated on a serious plan to recycle the waste we generate to flow back to industry as raw marerial. The options for exporting it overseas are ending and sending it to landfill is fast filling usable sites. It seems it took a pandemic to undertake what should have been obvious years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment