Question Session from the audience
Q. For businesses to put procedures in place to share their waste what’s the time frame to see some dollars roll back to businesses or financial encouragement back from the waste levy?
Most of the waste businesses produce can be reused with very little money involved.
Second opportunity is where waste can be refined then supplied to another businesses. Some money involved.
A couple of programs coming online in September. Other grants coming along to do with the equipment rebate will be available in September. There are about 20 programs currently under development to deliver against the $120million business waste fund. The hope is that once we get more capacity up it will become more cost effective for businesses downstream.
Currently about $10million grants available. All sorts of grants.
There are some great programs well thought out with industry support from DERM. There is also Federal money available for cluster development for waste management.
Putting all that aside it just makes good business sense for businesses to look locally and ask who are the local producers of waste and what might be reused locally.
Will DERM partner with the recyclers who are doing all the work to make it more profitable for them? The A$ is going up and it is making it hard for recycling businesses to make a profit. Commodity price goes down. Staff costs transport costs going up.
Tamara will take it away and consider it further.
In the Federal sphere there is a lot of work being done with product stewardship. The dollars that are going to be available from that scheme are going to fund recyclers.
Already some money going into compost.
DEEDI will get case studies and promote them back to the market and assist businesses through regional centres mentoring programs and trade & export. There is a lot offering supporting good businesses and technologies grow.
The levy is likely to drive more business to recyclers.
A lot of people here are in the recycling game. They need to get a kick-back from the waste levy. They want to be recognised for what they are doing.
Without us the recyclers the program is lost.
The solution is to find new markets. Encourage manufacturers to incorporate more reuse products.
Toner cartridges are not being reused. The contracts exclude small local manufacturers.
Sustainable procurement rules will be revisted by the government.
Has to start from demand for the products – that is where govt wants to encourage market growth.
Q. Conflicts of standards in Moreton Bay Regional Council. Businesses going to landfill one day and being able to deliver one type of waste one day and the next day not being able to dispose of that type of waste.
Businesses need to be aware of the price differences in clean product of one type compared to how much more they are charged if it is mixed together.
Q. Would we support a Waste Exchange Register in our region?
Yes definitely.