Boomerang Alliance Slams Productivity Commission’s Final Report
Friday, 22 December 2006 20:12
The original terms of reference tasked the Commission with making recommendations on optimising resource efficiencies to improve economic, environmental and social outcomes. The Commission was warned that implementing their recommendations would cut recycling in half, send an additional 7.5 million tonnes to mass-dump landfill, lose $400 million in commodity sales, lose 5,000 full time jobs, and add significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions through landfill gas and increased energy to manufacture from virgin, as opposed to raw materials.
“The Commission has not addressed any of the fatal flaws in its methodology.” said Jeff Angel, Director, Total Environment Centre. “It is impossible to see how the Commission’s recommendations represent anything but a backward step to the 1970s truck and dump waste industry. They are also impractical and not properly costed.”
“The Commission’s report can be summarised as saying that because waste is a cost to business, and business needs to reduce its costs, we need cheap landfill for business to be competitive” said Angel.
“However this type of neo-classical nonsense has been completely discredited by the Stern Review of the economics of climate change, where the environmental consequences of climate change were identified as the greatest and widest ranging market failure ever.”
The Productivity Commission has not costed landfill gas emissions at the latest cost estimate of climate change damage of $110 per tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent – which completely invalidates all of their conclusions. It is estimated that every tonne of Municipal Waste has a societal cost of $125 from its potential landfill gas emissions – at 25 times greater than the Commission’s conclusion of $5 per tonne.
“The rejection of the waste management hierarchy, removal of landfill levies and removal of waste diversion targets is completely out of step with what the community demands. Zero waste is more than an aspirational target. It is an achievable goal that will drive technological innovation and improved environmental outcome. Furthermore, given the amount of embodied energy and embodied water in waste, in addition to the enormous climate change liability of landfill, it is imperative that a national policy of zero waste is established as an immediate priority. Industry needs to realise that its ‘free lunch’ is over."
"The community refuses to continue to subsidise large corporations to the tune of $300 million for their bad design and refusal to accept responsibility for the wastes they force onto the community. A raft of market interventions is required to support the drive to zero waste, including container deposits, take back schemes, extended producer responsibility, and other polluter pays initiatives,” Angel concluded.
