Waste management, resource recovery and, increasingly, the circular economy occupy an interesting halfway house when it comes to essential infrastructure. Historically provided in a vertically integrated manner by local government, these services are now delivered by a multitude of government and commercial providers across diffuse and often lengthy networks.
These networks do many things very well, and other things less well. But where they interface with the public, the almost frictionless manner in which unwanted materials disappear is both a blessing and a curse. Waste management as an essential service is perhaps most easily defined by considering what would happen if this almost seamless removal of materials from our everyday lives were to stop.
It wouldn’t be good.
In urban areas, resource recovery is supported by a significant network of facilities: transfer stations and recovery facilities that aggregate and bulk up collected materials; facilities that support trucks and other collection infrastructure; depots that collect cans and bottles; scrap metal dealers; liquid and hazardous waste facilities; and sites that manage construction and demolition waste.
Adelaide, my hometown, is seeing within its urban area, perhaps for the first time, just how substantial the infrastructure requirements can be when huge transport tunnels are bored underground and vast quantities of spoil need to be managed.
This network of sites is not the product of any grand master plan, nor of a conscious effort to ensure that the infrastructure necessary for resource recovery is in place. Even today, the strategic and policy documents that shape South Australia’s future development contain little more than a few morsels on waste, resource recovery and the circular economy. I’ve made some mileage in presentations from noting that the Planning and Design Code, our statewide planning policy document, contains the word ‘circular’ only in reference to windows. To be fair, the circular economy was not as prominent a policy concept when the Code was written in 2019.
The network of sites is instead the product of a couple of things.
Firstly, local government traditionally performed this role and generally understood the need to own sufficient land for depots, transfer stations and other facilities necessary to manage waste within council areas. Over time, many of these sites have evolved in ways that could never have been anticipated, often in partnership with the private sector.
Secondly, and in the majority of cases, these sites have been developed by private-sector operators seeking a commercial return from providing a service, whether to government, other businesses or the community directly. In that respect, they are no different from any other private-sector operator.
Typically, however, they have gone through the difficult process of obtaining regulatory approvals: development approval, environmental approvals and licences to undertake their activities. In urban areas, where it is often impossible to meet prescribed buffer-distance guidelines, gaining these approvals can require significant empirical analysis and predictive modelling to address issues including acoustic performance, air quality, water quality and traffic management.
In many cases, legacy sites must also modify their operations and install additional mitigation measures as sensitive receivers develop or intensify nearby.
These existing sites therefore carry significant value through the approvals and existing-use rights they possess. That value does not accrue only to the landowner or operator. It also benefits the community, which relies on a network of facilities to ensure waste can be recovered and managed sustainably and cost-effectively.
It is noteworthy that, as container deposit schemes have expanded around Australia, accessibility has become a key measure of their performance. In Adelaide, where our container deposit scheme will celebrate 50 years of operation next year, urban depots have evolved over time, acquiring additional land and often providing a much broader range of services to the community than simply accepting 10-cent bottles and cans.
The value of these properties — through their approvals, operations and strategic locations — is often intangible and difficult to capture on a profit-and-loss statement or balance sheet, whether viewed from the perspective of government, an operator or the broader community.
And unlike the layers of regulatory protection that recognise the spatial requirements of road networks, power, water, sewerage and telecommunications — the services we traditionally think of as essential infrastructure — there is very little equivalent protection for the diffuse network of resource recovery infrastructure.
That creates a significant challenge.
Without those protections, these sites are exposed to the same market forces as any other industrial property. Yet resource recovery facilities often require higher levels of management, mitigation and ongoing effort to ensure potential interface issues do not compromise their operations.
In urban areas, as land becomes scarcer and more expensive, its highest and best use can change over time. We have seen many industrial uses that were once distributed throughout cities progressively relocate into larger facilities within major industrial areas.
Crash repair workshops are a good example. They have largely disappeared from inner-city and local neighbourhoods, partly because of more stringent air-quality and acoustic requirements, but also because the land they occupied became far more valuable for uses such as multi-storey residential development than for an 800-square-metre crash repair business.
Resource recovery thrives on space.
Space for logistics. Space for storage. Space for processing. Space for customer access.
Very often, these facilities cannot take advantage of vertical development in the way that residential, office, retail or even institutional uses can.
I have been involved in many projects assessing the highest and best use of resource recovery sites where there is a significant divergence between the value of the land and the return generated by the existing operation. In some cases, the use endures only because the operator also owns the land and retains an interest in the legacy operation.
But that interest is not absolute.
If interface issues become too difficult, licensing requirements become too onerous, or the commercial conditions under which the facility operates materially change, the owner may decide that the land is simply too valuable not to redevelop.
If that happens, the site can be lost from the resource recovery network — potentially permanently and with no realistic replacement.
There is no simple answer to this.
The system is highly complex, with many stakeholders and competing commercial interests. But the price of failure is high.
The cost of managing waste is already embedded in council rates and other property charges. As product stewardship and extended producer responsibility schemes expand in coming years, those costs will become more deeply embedded in the products we buy.
That is not a bad thing. The costs of managing products at the end of their life need to be internalised in the price of the product, rather than shifted onto the broader community. Done properly, this also creates a price signal that discourages unrecoverable materials from continuing to enter the economy.
Ultimately, if the spatial costs of resource recovery increase, those costs will flow back to the community and to consumers through the products and services they purchase.
In spatial terms, a two-pronged starting point is required.
Firstly, we need a sophisticated and granular understanding of the spatial requirements of the infrastructure needed to manage resource recovery. It does not matter whether that infrastructure is private, public or a combination of both. We need to understand the what, where and when of exactly what is required.
Secondly, our regulatory system needs to treat resource recovery as the essential service that it is.
It needs to define resource recovery clearly and consistently, articulate why it is spatially important, and explain what happens when we get it wrong. Policy and assessment guidelines also need to be realistic and achievable, particularly in ensuring that the infrastructure required in urban areas can be established where it is needed and subsequently protected from encroachment.
Returning to my South Australian example, neither the development system nor the environmental licensing system is close to achieving this outcome at present.
The future of accessible resource recovery infrastructure in our urban areas is not assured. Pressure is growing on many sites as alternative uses and redevelopment become increasingly attractive.
It is important that we act on these issues now, before we repeat mistakes that other cities — including some in Australia — are already paying dearly for.
