Over the last 12 months the public debate over the proposed Copping hazardous waste disposal landfill (or C-cell) has been the catalyst for a renewed debate about a range of waste management issues.

The proponent of the Copping C-cell, Southern Waste Solutions, has suggested a number of times that the community should refrain from criticizing the C-cell because most of us are probably sending household hazardous waste (HHW) to existing landfill sites, which are not designed to contain such wastes, and that this is probably causing significant environmental harm and risk to human health. The TCT will continue to criticise the proposal for a C-cell but we do agree that it is not acceptable to send HHW to landfill.

HHW includes a wide range of materials commonly used in households but which are toxic, corrosive, inflammable or have reactive ingredients.

If you have hazardous waste and attempt to find a safe means of disposing of it you will discover it is very difficult to find out what you should do and, in some critical areas, there seems to be no acceptable disposal option.

Tasmanian household hazardous waste pilot collection program

In response to the absence of appropriate means of disposing of HHW, the ‘Tasmanian household hazardous waste pilot collection program’ operated from March 2009 until December 2012, offering Tasmanians an opportunity to safely dispose of household chemicals.

A strategic review of the program was undertaken and findings are presented in a report which is available on the Local Government Association of Tasmania website at http://www.lgat.tas.gov.au/ page.aspx?u=512
The project proved very popular and collected a large amount of hazardous waste which would otherwise have gone to landfill, but was discontinued when the original funding ran out. As stated in the review, while an effective program it was also an expensive one.

The pilot collection program review report found that, over those three years the pilot collection program offered 34 drop-off days across 24 local council jurisdictions, with 2658 people surrendering 78,529kg of material at a total cost of $967,959.

The first of its kind in Tasmania, the jointly funded ($500,000 each) state- and local-government project demonstrated the benefits of statewide partnership projects. Interestingly 59.2% of all material collected was paint.

The pilot collection program review called for ongoing government funding but also recommended that more could be achieved using existing resources, such as collection points at waste transfer stations, more effectively, seeking private sponsorship for mobile Low Volume High Toxicity (LVHT) drop-off days and investigating schemes to make producers more responsible for disposal of their hazardous wastes.

These were the recommendations of the review:

• Design and provide funding for a statewide network of permanent drop-off sites for High Volume Low Toxicity (HVLT) items (82% of material by volume) such as paint, batteries, gas bottles, fluoro tubes and aerosols. Where such collections already exist, consider the option of expanding and/or creating a regional centre for collection and consolidation of material. This will allow for greater economies of scale, reduce the cost per kilo for transport and treatment, and allow greater opportunity for direct reuse (e.g. paint) via resource recovery operations.

• Provide regionally focused mobile drop-off locations targeting Low Volume High Toxicity (LVHT) materials. Mobile collection days are expensive to host and should aim to collect only highly toxic material.

• Develop a register system for participants using mobile drop-off days. This ensures greater effectiveness of offering mobile days, allows better planning and higher quality of service with reduced overheads.

• Marketing to utilise a variety of options such as letterbox drops, newspaper, radio, television, local government and state government promotional avenues. Support should also be provided for a freecall number and message bank service, and website.
• Actively pursue cost-saving measures by reuse, recycling and recovery of commodities, for example supporting and engaging reuse operations (e.g. tip shops).

• Engage Tasmanian organisations to assist financially with and/or in-kind sponsoring of mobile LVHT drop-off days and permanent HVLT sites.

• Train local/state government to operate components of the mobile drop-off days to help reduce operational costs.

• Partake in discussions regarding extended producer responsibility (EPR) schemes, and national or state product stewardship arrangements.

This is an extract from an article by Tasmanian Conservation Trust Director, Peter McGlone taken from the latest issue of the Tasmanian Conservtionist (#331). Read the full article on what the current state of play is with household hazardous waste (HHW) and how to improve it, what is wrong with HHW management and what to do or what you can’t do with car tyres, household batteries, TVs and e-waste, fluorescent tubes, pharmaceuticals.

Go to:

www.tct.org.au

for this, and more articles…
Peter McGlone Director Tasmanian Conservation Trust Inc www.tct.org.au