Having just finished the 2024 ENVIRO circular economy conference in Brisbane, it struck me how loud the recurring themes were that we heard over the two (2) days. Three (3) in particular stood out - economics (imagine circular economy actually being about economics), regulation and leadership. All three (3) are vital to successfully transitioning to a circular economy in 2030. However when it largely comes to policy in this area we are severely lacking.
 
Early on day one (1), Richard Denniss presented me with a real ‘aha’ moment when he said fundamentally economics is the efficient allocation of scarce resources. After the shudder from remembering first year university economics class, I couldn’t help wondering why we do not talk more about this - and why on earth we do not act more like this in Australia. Yes, Australia is the lucky country, but our luck is not separate or distinct from the luck of the planet generally, and as Jill Riseley correctly peppered us with stats from the most recent Circularity Gap Report about the over consumption of the planet’s finite resources and the falling circularity rate of materials, frustration simply grew in the room about the lack of leadership we are seeing in Australia (despite all the rhetoric).
 
As the United Nations states, some 50% of global greenhouse gas emissions and 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress is caused by resource extraction and processing – and as the Ellen Macarthur Foundation says up to 80% of a product’s environmental impact is influenced by decisions made at the design stage.  Quite simply we need to use fewer resources for longer. 

How can we do that? Well, other than buying less, we can actually regulate more. And the most obvious and arguably effective way to do this is through product stewardship. 

We all know the market will not fix itself and no matter where you sit in the supply chain, you will hear the consistent call for certainty and the need for a level playing field. To create the market conditions for the desired circular economy, we need regulation – but there appears to be complete reluctance to do this at scale. 

Product stewardship means producers taking primary responsibility (including financial and operational) for minimising the environmental and human health impacts of products they put on the market, by implementing various actions across the entire product lifecycle. It provides a clear pathway for businesses and governments to operationalise circular economy objectives by designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials circulating and restoring the environment, and let’s be clear - it must go well beyond the nebulous language that typically accompanies claims and pledges about circularity. 

When South Australia’s container deposit scheme began in 1977 it was one (1) of only a handful of product stewardship schemes worldwide. By 2000 when Australia’s next major product stewardship scheme (for oil) was established, there were around 100. And there were about 400 in 2016 according to the OECD.  While one (1) Australian state was an early adopter of product stewardship, we are now being left behind globally. 

For example, product stewardship regulations for packaging were introduced into Europe and Australia in the late 1990s. Europe was guided by the EU Packaging Directive which identified back then the growing problems of packaging waste, consumption of virgin non-renewable materials, the growing costs to government of waste management and the environmental and health impacts of hazardous components. Australia by the National Environment Protection (Used Packaging Materials) Measure (NEPM). Over 25 years later one has moved forward with a powerful new framework, and another has struggled to meet targets set. 
 
Product stewardship shifts the economic burden of products and their impacts away from governments and the broader community to the producer and user, significantly increasing the likelihood of genuine responsibility and investment by the private sector into activities to prevent and reduce waste, and increase lifecycle (eg design for reuse and repair), given the economic burden is placed squarely on those that benefit most from the products existence. 
Let’s be real – without financial incentives we just are not going to get the systems shift we need, particularly when profit margins reward existing behaviour.  

Further, following June’s Environment Ministers Meeting, it is clear there we are still tinkering and will not be getting a packaging product stewardship scheme in Australia until 2025 at the very earliest – some 27 years after the NEPM legislation. In the meantime, packaging has continued to grow with the latest APCO figures showing 6.98 million tonnes were placed on the market in 2021/22 (with 3.9 million tonnes recovered) – up from 5.45 million in 2017/18 (with 2.67 million tonnes recovered).  Unless there is a financial obligation to recover the total amount and investment in the facilities and buy back, this will not shift.  

The recent Planet Tracker report - ‘The Plastic Recycling Deception’ argued consumers have been made to feel responsible for low recycling rates and plastic producers have successfully passed the financial burden of dealing with its material onto others, including local councils and the WARR industry, while ignoring upstream measures to limit production, such as EPR, regulation or, for governments, taxation on production. It would be hard to argue these conclusions aren’t the case in Australia. 

Cost must be worn where it belongs to manage the efficient use of scarce resources. This goes for soft plastics too! Unless the real cost of managing packaging is placed on the generator, with real systems shift that balances placed on market with bought from market, we will keep stumbling along for another 27 years with little progress and even more deterioration of the environment.  

The argument is the same for many other product types - batteries, e-waste, paint, solar panels and on and on the list goes. If Australia sets a clear expectation that generators must take responsibility for the entire lifecycle of what they make, we will have a far greater circularity in Australia than the current 5.4%. 

Can anyone therefore please explain to me why on earth we are not moving rapidly towards a national product stewardship framework like the EU Waste Directives, and why we seem to be stuck in a six-monthly cadence of Environment Ministers Meeting with very little progress towards regulation as a whole (and only tiny steps for a few products)? Maybe we need to go back to the start - we need leadership and regulation – sadly both appear to be currently missing in this space. When will we fix it, I am not exactly sure but WMRR will keep fighting until we do.