James Bradley on confronting Australia’s largest garbage dump

we create. In confronting something we often seek to avoid, the enormous waste of our modern lives, James examines the nature of private consumption, its effects on the environment, and the lack of accountability baked into the system. It's a riveting piece. Enjoy It's Thursday, January nine.

over the crest of the hill. Heavy vehicles are bumping back and forth, their business concealed by mounds of earth. The hill is the Lucas Heights Landfill. Locked away beneath its surface are tens of millions of tons of compacted garbage. A decomposing mass of rubbish twenty five meters high, perhaps a clomet along and not much less wide from here that seems difficult to credit. Apart from the dozens of ravens screeching overhead, there is little to suggest the presence

of so much waste. No smell, no tottering piles of rubbish. Instead, it looks more like a mine or a building site. Inside the office beside the car park, I am introduced to the landfill manager, Elsie Chaiang. He is a slim man in his fifties, with the aura of thoughtful calm. I usually associate with somebody whose work involves taking time over things, an artisan or a farmer. Perhaps. Chiang started his career and waste in Hong Kong and began at

Lucas Heights after moving to Australia in twenty eleven. While I put on my hard hat and florovest, he talks me through the facility's operations. Originally set up in nineteen eighty seven after the closure of the old Lucas Heights landfill, it takes garbage from councils and businesses all over Southern Sydney, excepting not just the rubbish wheels stick in our red bins every week, but huge volumes of construction and commercial waste. This is borne in by a steady stream of trucks.

As Chiang is speaking to me, several pass through the gate outside the window, which wind their way up the hill towards the active area are glimpsed from the car park. These trucks deliver around three thousand tons of rubbish day, or close to a million tons a year. Handling all that waste requires a lot of engineering. Modern landfills aren't just holes in the ground full of garbage. Their extremely

sophisticated industrial operations subject to strict environmental controls. Here at Lucas Heights, for instance, the base of the landfall is lined with a two point five millimeter membrane of high density polyethylene, similar to the material used in plastic pipes and bottles, over almost a meter of clay. This liner is designed to prevent the highly toxic liquid that leaches out of the waste from contamining groundwater or migrating into

rivers and creeks. The top is also covered first with a three hundred millimeter thick intermediate deposit of rubble and dirt, and then, once the area has settled, a final layer of one point seven meters of soil, which will eventually be remediated into parkland or bush Even the active part of the landfill, known as the face, is carefully managed and circled on every side with netting to catch anything

that might blow away. Some sense of what that actually means can be gleaned from the diagram of the facility that's positioned on a stand in the office. Seen from above. The site is a bit over two kilometers from end to end and about half that across, and a regular oval nestled in the middle of thick bushland. The active

part of the facility is in the middle. At the southern end, a patch of green marks out the parts of the landfill that have been permanently covered and are being rehabilitated into parkland or Near the northern perimeter, a huge pit that will eventually be filled with garbages being prepared for lining. There is something more inspiring about the shear's scale of it, especially when one considers that Lucas

Heights isn't the only facility like this in Sydney. Bingo's Eastern Creek landfill is even bigger, says Theolia's Woodlawn Echo Precinct near Canberra, which also accepts a lot of Sydney's waste, and they in turn are also only three of the almost thirteen hundred landfills scattered around the country. This isn't just garbage. This is garbage's geological force, a tide of rubbish so huge it almost defies comprehension. Most of us don't think about waste all that often, and when we do,

it's usually with discomfort and embarrassment. Waste is shunted to the margins of our consciousness, both metaphorically and in a much more literal sense, ending up being shipped away to the outskirts of our cities and towns, and that goes double for landfill. Although many people get a warm glow out of recycling in the other forms of resource recovery, landfill is different. That's where the other stuff goes. The stuff we can't or more accurately, choose not to recover,

and there's a lot of that stuff. Australia generates around seventy six million tons of waste a year, while a bitter over sixty fears center that is recycled or recovered in some way Close to a third. More than twenty three million tons, almost a ton for every person in

the country ends up in landfill. About thirty percent of this waste is organic material, food waste, garden waste, timber, and other items, but it also incorporates large amounts of cardboard and paper, plastic, metal, building materials, glass, and soil contaminated with asbestos, chemicals or other hazardous wastes. As we wind up around the mound in a ute, Chiang points out the jetsons like structure of the Lucas Heights Nuclear reactor,

a complometer or so to the east. The southern half of the landfill is inside the exclusion zone that surrounds the reactor, a conjunction that seems almost too neat. When I ask Chiang whether that worries him, he replies that it's a good thing because it means there's no chance of the land around that part of the facility being

zoned for housing. On the western slope, where the mound has been covered over and the ground drops away towards the bush land that surrounds the facility, grass grows, giving the space a bucolic feel. It is only slightly diminished by the network of snaking pipes. At the top of

the mound. We stop and climb out. Birds swirl overhead, hundreds of ravens, as well as great flocks of ibis moving in formation, seagulls and dozens of pelicans, all honking and shrieking as they fight for space to land amid the trucks in front of us, A line of orange flags and a black pipe mark the boundary of the grass. Beyond them, the ground drops away into a shallow depression where huge trucks and bulldozers grind up and down through,

spilling piles of garbage. At one end, trucks are off loading bags and bags of rubbish, pouring out in great mounds. Once they've done that, one of several bulldozers bumps in and starts spreading it out, and finally, a massive, long bodied vehicle with sawtoothed wheels two or three meters in diameter, looking like it would be more at home in mad Macs grinds over the top the points on its wheels to compact the waste. While we stare at the trucks, I try to make notes about the profusion of stuff

spread out in front of me. There is almost too much to make sense of it. I can see tens of thousands of bags, many of them broken open, their contents spilling out. But I also spot broken furniture and bits of clothing that flap in the wind, as well as appliances and other less identifiable objects. There is a surprising number of splintered building paletts and what seems to be the framework for an entire wall, as well as bundles of plastic taping unraveled from some building site delivery.

I asked Chayang what the weirdest thing he has ever found is. He says that the police often come looking for evidence of one kind or another, usually guns or clothing, never bodies, I ask, He smiles. In Hong Kong, I did help the police look for a body, but we couldn't find it. After a minute or two, I noticed the garbage seems to be moving. A curious seething motion rippling across the surface. At first I think it must

be the bag shifting as they settle. Then I realize it's the birds scrambling here and there as the rubbish is spread and compacted, gobbling anything they can see. Do you get rats?

waste makes different smells. When we had the garden waist here a few years ago, that also generated a different odor. Even well run landfills, such as Lucas Heights, produce odors, meaning smell is a constant concern for landfill operators, especially as cities small outwards. In twenty twenty two, Clean even Haul landfill site in Melbourne's West was fined twenty thousand

dollars over smell complaints. Residents spoke of not being able to open their windows because of the stench, which one person described as like a rotten chemical, like a rotten stink, like air freshener, but it's not right. Earlier this year, Bingo's subsidiary Dial Dump was fined two hundred and eighty thousand dollars over persistent reports offensive smells emanating from its

vast Eastern Creek landfill in Sydney's West. Even more problematic are residents such as the underground fire at the Barrow Group's Sunshine landfill in Melbourne's West, which broke out in twenty nineteen and is still burning at the time of writing. Residence, some of whose houses are only sixty meters from the site, speak of having to stay indoors and keep windows and doors closed on days the wind blows the smoke towards them.

The problem of odour and other forms of contamination is further complicated by the fact that landfills were frequently situated an area of relatively low socioeconomics status. The area around the Sunshine landfill borders some of Melbourne's least advantage suburbs. In the case of Lucas Heights. The bushland that surrounds it diminishes its impact on residents, but that doesn't mean

there aren't ever complaints. When we get a complaint, we always try to identify the source of the smell, says Chayang. So we ask questions about what the smell is. But sometimes they cannot really describe it. They just say, tip Booter, the smell is an indicator of something else, however, something far more significant. Not all the garbage being spread and compacted by the bulldozers is inert in organic matter such as concrete and metal. Instead, it contains large amounts of

organic material. A lot of this is food waste, but certainly not all of it, as the building Pellett's been crushed by the compact to demonstrate, there is also a lot of wood, as well as cardboard, paper, and other

items such as nappies and adult and continence products. Even before it arrives here, this mess of organic material will have begun to decomposechrobes invade it, they begin to break down the chemical bonds that hold it together, transforming organic compounds such as proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates into sugars and amino acids and releasing carbon dioxide. But this is only

the first stage in the process. As the supply of oxygen is cut off, either by the weight of the garbage above or by the layer of earth on top of the mound, anaerobic bacteria takeover. These convert the increasingly soupy mess into acids and alcohol. This process, which can continue for decades, generates heat the interior of a landfall is typically between sixty to ninety degrees centigrade, as well as large amounts of liquid in the form of highly

acidic leachate. This leachate, which must be channeled out for treatment, usually contains a small gus board of toxins, ranging from heavy metals to pesticides and dangerous industrial chemicals such as

polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. Of particular concern a high concentrations of PERR and polyfluo alcohol substances more commonly known as pfazes or forever chemicals used in an astonishing variety of industrial and commercial applications, fire fighting foams, non stick surfaces on cooking products, electrical cables, paint glue, waterproof fabrics, carpet

and even makeup and lipstick. Pfazes have been linked to a long list of cancers, birth and developmental abnormalities, hormonal problems, and other disorders. They are also inconveniently for landfill operators, highly mobile and capable of traveling long distances if they enter groundwater. In twenty seventeen, a study of twenty seven Australian landfills found pfazes in the leech eight at all of them. And while most states now regulate the disposal

of prefazes, leaks still occur, particularly as landfills age. No Less importantly, decomposing landfill produces a cocktail of gases. These include trace elements of unpleasant substances such as dimethyl and hydrogen sulfides, the compounds responsible for the unpleasant odor many of us associate with rotten garbage, ammonia and benzene, as well as considerable quantities of carbon dioxide. But most importantly,

decomposing landfill releases large amounts of methane. Methane is the main constituent in natural gas, and as such is highly flammable. More significantly, however, it is an extremely potent greenhouse gas, trapping close to thirty times as much heat across a century as carbon dioxide. Its potency means curbing methane emissions is a crucial part of the fight against climate change.

But after plateauing in the early years of the twenty first century, methane emissions began rising again in two thousand and six and have continued to accelerate, particularly in the years since twenty twenty. This spike and methane emissions is one of the biggest obstacles keeping global heating under one point five degrees and cutting methane emissions by forty five percent by twenty thirty would avoid zero point three d degrees of heating. About sixty percent of methane emissions are

caused by humans. Three quarters of this comes from agriculture, largely of what is known as enteric fermentation or cow verbs and fossil fuel extraction, but most of the rest is produced by landfills and waste management. Indeed, while landfill gas only makes up about twenty percent of anthropogenic methane emissions, the potency of the methane means that the decomposing landfill accounts for just under two percent of greenhouse emissions, about

the same as aviation or global shipping. To put that in perspective, that's almost twice Australia's total emissions, not a lot less than those of Japan, the seventh largest emitter in the world. Here in Australia, landfills are estimated to produce around three percent of our total emissions. Worse yet, that figure may be an underestimate. Until recently, calculations of the emissions from landfills were mostly based on modeling of

data from a small number of facilities. But over the past few years a network of satellite its and aircrafts and carrying out more direct observations is revealed that many

landfills emit far more methane than previously understood. A study published earlier this year showed landfills in the United States produced one point four times more methane than previously reported, while analysis of satellite data by The Guardian identified several hundred huge leaks of methane at landfills around the world

in twenty twenty two. The vast bulk of these super emitter events were centered on large, poorly managed landfills and developing countries such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh that are also detected in Europe, The United States and in one instance, Australia. Landfill operators have traditionally dealt with this problem by the flaring the gas, essentially burning it off as it leaks out, or by extracting the gas and using it to generate electricity.

This converts to the methane into carbon dioxide, which, while still a greenhouse gas, traps far less heat, at least in the short term. Lucas Heights, like most large landfills in Australia, takes the second approach, sinking dozens of gas wells into the mound and piping the gas to a small power plant in one corner of the site, a process that produces enough electricity to power twenty five thousand homes.

Clean Away estimates its gas wells at Lucas Heights capture about ninety percent of the methane the facility produces, but other facilities are less scrupulous. Australian government figures estimate that less than half the gas produced by landfills gets caught, and only about four fifths of that, or a bit under forty percent of the total, is converted into energy. Or to put that another way, more than sixty percent of the methane released by Australian landfills leaks away into the atmosphere.

many other materials can be recovered and recycled. Methane emissions from landfill could be rapidly reduced by requiring all landfill operators to install gas capture technology, or, better yet, by simply banning the flow of organics to a landfill altogether. Once diverted from landfill, food waste could be transformed into compost or combined with other organic waste in anaerobic digesters. These devices, which employ the same processes of decomposition that

take place in landfills. Under controlled conditions allow one hundred percent of the gas produced to be captured and transformed in to energy, and the remaining material, known as digestate, to be used as compost. Material that is unsuitable for ether composting or an aerobic digestion can be incinerated or

transformed in waste to energy facilities. A recognition of the importance of increasing circularity was embedded in the National Waste Policy under the Morrison government in twenty nineteen, which saw all three levels of government agree to work together to

reduce waste and increase recycling. Central to the strategy was an ambitious action plan that committed to recovering or recycling eighty percent of Australia's waste, harving the amount of organic waste ends up in landfill, and reducing per capita waste by ten percent by twenty thirty. Five years later, those

targets look hopelessly optimistic. Not only has the overall resource recovery rate barely shifted, but both the amount of organics we sent to landfill and per capita waste production have actually increased. Mike Ritchie is the managing director of MRA

Consulting Group of Australia's leading environmental consultancies. A former Director of Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association Australia w M double r Here's worked for VISI, served as a sessional commission for the New South Wales Land and Environment Court, and spent six years as national general manager at waste giant Suez Australia. Richie says there is little to no chance Australia will meet the targets under existing policy settings.

We're currently twelve million tons a year behind where we need to be to meet and eighty percent recovery rate. Richie says by twenty thirty, population growth and rising consumption mean that gap will be closer to eighteen million tons. To close that gap, we need to grow our recycling rate by about two to three million tons a year. Historically,

Australia has never done anything like that. The best we've achieved is about a million tons a year, so we need to double or triple the rate we're growing recycling. Richie argues that the fundamental problem is a lack of accountability. We've seen almost zero coordination between the states, territories and local government on how to actually achieve the targets, he says, and there's not a single person in Australia at a state, federal or local level whose job it is to make

sure we hit them. Gail Sloane is the chief executive w M double R. When I ask her whether Australia is on track to meet the waste targets, she laughs, We're not even close, she says. Our recycling rate is stagnated at sixty two or sixty three percent since twenty nineteen. That means we have six years to grow it by seventeen percent. That just isn't going to happen on our

current trajectory of investment in market development. When asked for comment, the Federal Minister for the Environment in Water Tanya plipersec emphasize the government's investment in recycling infrastructure with states, territories in industry. We're spending one billion dollars on one hundred and thirty two projects which will recycle an extra one point three million tons of waste while creating over three

thousand jobs. Plybersex said in an email statement. Once this funding has been rolled out, we will almost double recycling capacity in Australia. We've also funded twenty nine projects to recycle food and organic waste, which will increase organic processing by almost one million tons each year. Sloan dismisses this claim.

The investment that the government refers to as the Recycling Modernization Fund commenced under the Morrison government to address the approximately two million tons of predominantly plastic and paper material that were kept in Australia when their export was banned in twenty nineteen. It was never intended to address over twenty million tons of valuable material going to landfill every year, of which we need to divert least another ten million tons in the next six years to achieve our twenty

thirty targets. Part of the problem is a lack of policies designed to divert waste and in particular, greenhouse gas generating organics from landfill. In the media, recycling and diversion from landfill is often framed as a question of corporate social responsibility. But Richie and every person I have spoken to in the industry that this is a mistake. The

industry is economically rational. They won't drive four hundred kilometers to pick up a ton of cardboard, nor will they drive an eight ton truck around the suburbs of Sydney to pick up food waste. He says, while he allows it at some companies committing to such practices for brand recognition reasons, that won't lead most to follow suit. The

economics are dragging them the other way. In a competitive world, if I own a restaurant and it's cheaper for me to land fill my food waste, then that's where it's going. Waste is like a river, It flows downhill to the

cheapest price, and in Australia that's almost always landfill. In Europe, governments have simply banned the flow of many materials to landfill altogether, resulting in rates of land filling they are as much as ninety to ninety five percent lower than in Australia, which he prefers the use of levies which they allow more flexibility. But he argues that either way,

governments haven't done that work. They haven't approached it and said, all right, we've made a commitment to a target of eighty percent recycling and fifty percent of organics and a ten percent reduction in per capital waste generation, and this is what the economic signals to achieve that need to be. That's what's missing. He says that high level plan in each state that says, this is the infrastructure we need to build to achieve the levee, to achieve the targets.

This is the amount of plastic recycling infrastructure we need, or concrete recycling, or construction waste or commercial waste recycling that we need to lift each of those sectors up to the eighty percent. At present, every Australian jurisdiction other than the Northern Territory imposes a landfill levee. These levees are generally higher in metropolitan areas than in regional centers, and range from just under forty five dollars per ton in Tasmania to one hundred and seventy dollars ten per

ton in Sydney. This price signal has already been extremely effective at lifting rates of recovery and recycling of construction waste, which have risen from around sixty four percent a decade ago to almost eighty percent to day, partly because metal and rubble and other forms of building waste are heavy and therefore attract high levees, and partly because materials such as steel and concrete are highly recyclable but While recovery

rates in the construction industry are rising elsewhere, they're heading south. Rates of recovery of commercial and industrial waste have fallen sharply, dropping from around sixty five percent to under sixty percent since twenty sixteen, and after declining almost ten percent between twenty fifteen and twenty eighteen, recovery of municipal waste has

stagnated it under fifty percent. Richie argues that in New South Wales, an annual rise of just six dollars over three years would be enough to place recovery and recycling on a trajectory that would make it possible to meet the targets, provided the revenue as invested in developing recycling infrastructure.

The problem isn't a lack of mechanisms, he says, it's a lack of strategic thinking and willingness to take on the issue of waste management, which has spent six months in New South Wales with the CEO of the Vironment Protection Authority doing almost daily press conferences about as best as in garden mulch. And important as that is, it's

just not as important as building a sustainable society. This problem is particularly stark when it comes to food waste or what people in the waste business dub putes for putrescibles. Food waste makes up well over half the waste produced by households, and most of it ends up in landfill,

where it produces me sane. Because the cost of landfill remains below the point where it is more economic for councils to start separating out food waste, uptake of food organics and garden organics recycling or FOGO has been limited, and in states where it has begun, such as Victoria

and South Australia, has been driven by mandates. In states such as New South Wales, where councils are not required to move to separate FOGO collection until twenty thirty, less than a quarter of Sydney's councils are set up FOGO schemes. As a result, New South Wales has not seen the development of industrial scale composting facilities such as those that have come online in Victoria and South Australia in recent years.

But food waste is only one area where a failure to put in place the necessary market conditions is holding back investment in recycling. Although technology exists to convert many plastics into pellets capable of being re used. Australian manufacturers are not required to use a minimum amount of recycled plastic or to use locally produced pellets, meaning that in those cases where a cycled plastic is incorporated in new products, it is almost always imported from China, where it can

be produced more cheaply than it can here. Similarly, almost two point five million tons of timber ends up in landfill, where it emits large quantities of methane. Much of this timber also comes from native forests, contradicting the timber industry's claims that the carbon contained in the timber removed from forests is stored in wood products rather than ending up in the atmosphere. These changes need to be complemented by

better regulation higher up the waste stream. Products. Jewish ship schemes, which require manufacturers to take responsibility for the clar election and disposal of the products they produce, have the potential to reduce environmental impact. This is especially true when it comes to hazardous materials, but the same principles are also

applicable to many non hazardous materials. The most recent nationwide study of product stewardship schemes published in twenty twenty three, identified one hundred and six schemes in Australia, covering materials as various as clothing, beauty products, and agricultural chemicals. In total, these schemes collected three hundred and sixty six thousand tons of materials in twenty twenty two. Yet almost all of these schemes are extremely small scale, and the vast majority

collect only a fraction of the products they apply to. Indeed, if the one hundred and six schemes studied, only nine had an effectiveness of more than fifty percent, and the remaining ninety seven had an average effectiveness of just four percent or didn't report at all. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the schemes that are most effective are mostly mandatory, although tire and paint schemes, both of which are funded by industry, are also extremely successful. In some cases, the lack of effective

products stewardship schemes has significant safety implications. The failure to mandate the collection of batteries is believed to be a factor in the increasing number of fires at landfills on garbage trucks. Anecdotally, the problem appears to be driven by vapes, which have an habit of igniting when crushed in garbage compactors.

But it also means manufacturers continue to design and produce goods that cannot be easily recycled or reused because they are not being made responsible for the cost of disposing them. Behind all these questions, of course, is the problem of how much waste we produced in the first place and the consumption that drives it. Again, government has a role to play through the establishment of right to repair obligations and other schemes that extend the lifetime of products, or

the outlawering of single use products in unnecessary packaging. But ultimately, cutting consumption depends upon a shift away from a culture the privileges the accumulation of private wealth to one built around principles of public good and the shared use of resources. A move to a more circular economy would have huge benefits for Australia. In almost every instance, recycling not only avoids the need to source new raw materials, thus avoiding

destructive mining and deforestation, it uses far less energy. Recycled cardboard, for instance, requires only around three quarters of the energy in a fraction of the water needed to produce cardboard from virgin pulp, while Fabricating an aluminium can out of recycled metal only demands around five per cent of the

energy required to produce one from scratch. Similarly, recycling a ton of glass avoids the extraction of one point two tons of raw materials such as sand, soda, ash, and limestone, and reduces energy consumption by three quarters across the economy,

these savings stack up quickly. One recent study suggests that, in combination with the banning of organics from landfill and more effective capture of landfill gas and waste to energy, increase rates of recovery and recycling could cut a strugger's greenhouse gas emissions by up to ten percent and create up to fifty thousand jobs. Why then, aren't governments taking more decisive action? Governments don't like the grind, says Gale Sloane. This is long term systemic policy, and that means making

decisions and sticking to them. Instead, they want to be doing new stuff and announceables. But she also thinks it's about a failure to understand the sector and a tendency not to connect questions about how we handle waste with climate and economic policy. Waste is still an end of pipe afterthought for government, Sloane says, they don't take a material, carbon and industry approach, so it's a very nineteen eighties horse and cart, throw it out in the streets thing

for them. They're not thinking about the big questions, why do we buy so much stuff? Where do we invest? How do we improve design and manufacture? None of that is where it needs to be. There's none of that green deal thinking. Mike Ritchie thinks ministers frequently lacked the bandwidth to spend time on waste policy, especially when so much energy is being devoted to the energy transition. He also admits divining a baffling. There are things you can

criticize about the government's climate policies. The one thing you can't say is they aren't giving it a red hot go, he says. But that's certainly not the case with waste. When was the last time you heard someone saying the government's going too hard on the landfill levy, or that it shouldn't ban organics from landfill or force big companies to recycle their food waste. It just doesn't make sense. These are easy political wins. It's almost risk free politics.

At the end of my tour of Lucas Heights. We stop at the northern end of the facility. Beside us yawns a huge pit, perhaps six hundred meters square and almost fifty meters deep. At the far end, a pull of leech eight gleams in the winter light. At the other several earth movers are loading rubble and dirt into a truck, ready for it to be transported to the

mound behind us. Elsi Chayang explains that once the pit is lined, will stop adding rubbish to the top of the mound and start trucking in here instead, And once it is full in twenty thirty seven or so, it too will be capped, and this entire facility will cease operation. As he speaks, I'm struck again by the pride he takes in this place, its sufficiency and order. But I'm also reminded of the sheer volume of garbage that ends up here, and the failure of imagination and political will

it embodies. Perhaps that is just another manifestation of our tendency to treat waste as an afterthought, something we banish to the edge of consciousness. Perhaps it would be better understood as a symptom of the culture of consumption that shapes our society and the extractive assumptions upon which it rests. Nonetheless, there is no question we need to find better ways to think about the waste we make, what we do with it, and to recognize the implications of our tendency not to do so.