Australia – landfilling costs millions

The annual environmental cost of landfilling of putrescible waste in Australian major cities may exceed A$640 million per year, according to research undertaken as part of a soon-to-be-released study by sustainability consultancy, Nolan-ITU.



In comparison, the cost of salinity to Australia amounts to A$243 million per year. The preliminary costing of landfilling‘‘s impacts includes:



air emissions from best practice landfill leachate from best practice landfill greenhouse gases from best practice landfill



On a State-by-State basis, research done for the independently conducted study (which primarily aims to assess an Alternative Waste Treatment technology) has identified that the environmental cost of landfilling putrescible waste could potentially be as high as follows:

NSW: A$238 million

Victoria: A$132 million

Queensland: A$124 million

South Australia: A$50 million

Western Australia: A$90 million

ACT: A$9 million

Hannes Partl, Nolan-ITU‘‘s Director for Waste Management and Technology, said: “Many stakeholders have long known that landfilling has a negative environmental impact compared to other waste management methods. Nolan-ITU believed it was important to begin to establish some objective quantification for how much landfill may or may not environmentally cost, and express this in a meaningful way.”



“More detailed quantification of the comparative financial, environmental and social cost and benefits of different waste management options is critical to enable decision-making that supports sustainability goals. Decision-makers increasingly need to consider not just the financial costs of a waste management option, but its total societal costs and benefits as well,” Hannes Partl said.



“Establishing a shared understanding of true landfill costs also gives policy makers ‘‘food for thought‘‘ about current landfill disposal prices and whether they truly address actual costs going into the future,” Partl said.



The study used a widely accepted methodology involving triple bottom line cost / benefit analysis. The same approach has been used by Nolan-ITU in separate studies and projects for the National Packaging Covenant Council, the NSW Jurisdictional Recycling Group and the Publishers National Environment Bureau, the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation, and EcoRecycle Victoria.



The environmental analysis is based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Economic Valuation. This method quantifies material and energy inputs and outputs to the waste management system and then values these flows using established economic values. Pollutant loads within impact categories are assigned monetary values based on existing and published cost benefit studies by Australian regulatory agencies. The net environmental impact/benefit is then expressed in dollar terms, or “Eco$”.



Further study results of the broader triple bottom line analysis of an Alternative Waste Treatment technology will be released in early to mid September.



For more information, contact:



Peter Shmigel Director Nolan-ITU (email: pshmigel@nolanitu.com.au)