Frequently Asked Questions

1. How is general household waste managed in Australia?

General household waste (we call this mixed solid waste or putrescible waste) is usually disposed of in a landfill.

WSN Environmental Solutions owns and operates four landfills in Sydney. For more information on what happens at these landfills please refer to our Easy Guide booklet: Landfills - What You Need to Know (PDF, 879kB).

2. How much mixed solid waste is sent to landfill each year?

In 2002 around 22.45 million tonnes of waste went to landfill across the country. In 2002-2003 approximately 6.34 million tonnes were disposed of in NSW landfills, making us one of the highest waste producers in the world per head of population. Please refer to site specific information booklets to find out how much mixed solid waste is sent to WSN Environmental Solutions landfills.

3. How can we reduce the amount of waste that ends up in a landfill?

You can reduce the amount of waste you put in the landfill by simply:

• Avoid making waste – by not buying things we can live without, we avoid creating more waste and save money too. If we use fewer products now, there will be less waste later;
• Shopping wisely – buy recycled products and products that can be recycled, buy only what you need and goods with little or no packaging;
• Doing the 3Rs – reduce, reuse and recycle. On average over 80% of what we throw away can be recycled and/or reused. For example, garden organics or food scraps can be recycled by having a home compost or worm farm; and
• Disposing of items responsibly and appropriately – there are certain items, such as car batteries and household chemicals that should not go in the mixed solid waste bin because these can contaminate our groundwater and endanger human health.

• At all WSN Environmental Solutions’ waste and recycling centres there is a Resource Recovery Centre where small business and residents can drop off items that can be reused and recycled. For more information on what is accepted at our Resource Recovery Centres please refer to our site specific information booklets. We also accept separated garden organics to be processed into various soil conditioning products. Removing materials that can be reused or recycled reduces the amount of waste going to landfill.
• Most councils in Australia provide bins for residents to put their recyclable materials in to be processed into new products. Some councils also provide bins for residents to put their garden organics in to be processed into compost, mulch and other soil conditioning products. By having these extra bins, the size of your general household garbage bin can be reduced and therefore help reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. For more information about how we recycle garden organics please refer to our Easy Guide booklet: How We Recover Garden Organics (PDF, 1MB).
• Some councils in Sydney are sending their mixed solid waste to alternative waste technology facilities. These facilities recover resources from the waste, including creating compost, recovering recyclables and producing green electricity. This can divert up to 80% of waste away from landfill and help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Most councils in Sydney also run community and school education programs to increase the general public’s awareness on how waste is managed. WSN Environmental Solutions also provides direct educational support to councils as well as producing educational resources for the general public.
• There are other initiatives by industry to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. These initiatives come under the banner of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). EPR is where manufacturers take some form of physical and/or financial responsibility for the environmental impacts of their products. For example, the industry association for agricultural and veterinary chemical manufacturers (Avcare) and the National Farmers’ Federation have developed and implemented a scheme called ChemClear to collect and safely dispose of unwanted chemicals. Another example is mobile phone batteries – they can be returned to manufactures to be recycled. EPR schemes have been implemented in other countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.

• Water contamination
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Dust and odour
• Noise
• Litter

• The gas produced from WSN Environmental Solutions’ landfills is collected and converted into renewable energy, minimising greenhouse gas emissions;
• All water ways around our sites are monitored and water run off from sites collected and treated to prevent water contamination;
• We cover the waste at the end of each day to reduce litter around the site and dust is suppressed by spraying water (collected in storm water dams) on the site roads; and
• We have also developed an in-house program to monitor gases and accurately pinpoint odour sources at the site. This means that odour sources can be identified quickly and action taken to deal with the cause of the problem.

• Dry waste such as treated timber and bubble wrap are usually disposed of in an inert waste landfill;
• Liquid waste such as mixed oils, solvents from chemical laboratories are treated in liquid treatment plants;
• Medical waste such unused medicines, tissue samples from testing laboratories, contaminated containers are treated in a number of ways, such as incineration, autoclave, and microwave technology; and
• Hazardous waste is treated in a number of ways depending on what type of hazardous waste is being disposed of. Landfill is not an option for hazardous waste.

• Recycling conserves our natural resources because products that are recyclable can be turned into new products with little to no use of raw materials from the Earth.
• Recycling reduces the amount of pollution that results from making products such as paper, aluminium, steel, plastics and glass.
• Recycling reduces the amount of energy and water used during the manufacturing process when compared to the use of raw materials.
• Recycling saves landfill space.
• Recycling helps organisations save money on their waste disposal costs.

• Saving 2,654 Olympic sized swimming pools of water;
• Saving 2005 Giga-Watt hours of energy, which is equivalent to powering 334,000 homes; and
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to taking 55,000 cars off the road permanently.