Yesterday it was revealed that thousands of tonnes of construction and demolition waste from New South Wales is sent to South East Queensland each week, to be recycled.
Except it isn’t recycled.
A Fairfax investigation found nearly all of it is sent straight to landfill, without any processing.
So what’s going on? A big part of it comes down to our economic bffs: China. For a number of years, a big chunk of our recycling waste was sent to the country. Chinese manufacturers turned it into new products they could then resell. But as of January 1st this year, Beijing banned 24 categories of recyclables and solid waste.
Pretty much covering what we sent them, and it’s left Australia in a bit of a pickle.
