6 Shocking Facts about West Australian Waste Generation
10 February 2017
When choosing a waste management company for your business, or even just choosing a skip provider for your home clear-out, it’s extremely important to choose a provider that disposes of your waste in a responsible manner. You want to choose a provider who will sort and recycle any waste they can before bringing the minimal remainder to landfill. Not only will this keep the carbon footprint of your home or your business down – it will also keep the cost of your waste disposal down as you’ll save on landfill costs.
So why is it so important to responsibly dispose of your waste? Just take a look at these shocking statistics and facts to see just how big of a problem waste truly is in Western Australia!
1. Each person in WA produces around than 2.4 tonnes of waste each year
This means that an average household could fill an entire three-bedroom two-bathroom home each year with this amount of waste. That is a lot of waste to be piling into our landfills each year.
2. WA’s rate of waste production per capita is the highest in all of Australia
The national average is just over 2 tonnes. Tasmania has the lowest rate of all states and territories, averaging just over 1 tonne per person.
3. When it comes to recycling, WA is towards the bottom of the barrel again
In WA we are recycling just over 30 percent of our waste. This is abysmal when compared to the national average of more than 50 percent. The Australian Capital Territory is in the lead at about 75 percent. This is an area in which we could all work to improve.
4. Construction and demolition projects throughout Western Australia account for about 4.4 million tonnes of waste per annum
In fact, construction and demolition projects account for over half of all waste generated across the state, more than WA’s municipal and commercial waste streams combined. With ongoing construction projects on the rise in the state, this number is expected to continue to increase over the next decade.
5. Three-Quarters of C&D waste ends up in landfill – that’s 3.3 million tonnes!
Of all the construction and demolition waste, nearly three-quarters of it ends up in landfills. Waste from this sector accounts for about half of the rubbish currently in Western Australian landfills.
Currently, only about one-quarter of construction and demolition recyclable materials are being recovered and saved from the landfills. Instant Waste Management’s goal is to bring that amount up to 80-90 percent of waste being recovered. We have access to around 1.8M tonnes of licenced processing and waste facilities in WA, making us the largest privately owned family business in our sector.
6. There are currently more than 30 landfills in the Perth Metropolitan Region
And more will likely be needed as our population grows. These facilities require daily vigilance to ensure that as much of the recyclable waste as possible is being diverted from the landfills.
The Waste Authority has set waste reduction targets that WA needs to meet in order to preserve our environment, and we are well off of hitting the 2020 targets after missing the 2015 targets.
As our population continues to rise and the demands on the construction industry increase to build more housing to accommodate the additional people, the problem of waste management is not something that is going to go away any time soon. In fact, this issue is only going to become more serious in the future. As the landfills become more and more impacted, we are all going to have to work together to reduce our level of waste production. This is not something that we can let fall by the wayside if we hope to preserve our country and our planet for future generations.
How is Instant Waste Management helping?
Here at Instant Waste Management, we are more than just a waste collection and disposal company. We also focus our efforts on improving recycling services and preventing excess waste generation. One of the key ways we do this is through our waste recovery program. Whereas most of our competitors simply take your rubbish straight to the landfill, we go a step beyond.
Before going to the landfill, we bring all of the waste we collect to our materials recovery facility. Once there, we carefully sort through all of the waste to determine if any of it is capable of being recycled. We separate out and recycle anything that can be, then take only what is left to the landfill. Aside from improving our state’s recycling efforts, this also minimises the impact on the landfills, which reduces costs for both landfill managers and waste management customers. Finally, this method is far more environmentally conscious and will help to preserve our ecosystem going forward.
We are also doing what we can to improve the waste management in the construction sector. Of the waste produced in most of the building projects we work on with the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), we are achieving over 90% waste diverted from landfill. Find out more about some of our projects with the GBCA here.
You can do your part by choosing a responsible waste management or skip provider – so get in touch with us today!
