LIMESTONE Coast local government officials will investigate the establishment of a material resource facility to underpin the region’s recycling
industry.
Wattle Range Council will team up with Mount Gambier and Naracoorte Lucindale councils to provide a business action plan in the proposal.
The facility is expected to receive, separate and prepare recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers.
The need for the facility comes as prices for specified recyclable materials continue to decrease, with paper and cardboard being the most recent material to significantly drop in value.
Penola Recyclable’s owner and operator Anne-Marie Williams said the effects are still being felt at a regional level and called on all tiers of government to assist in finding solutions.
“Our main business is the 10c refundable container scheme,” Ms Williams said.
“Although we were collecting paper and cardboard, we can no longer do that because the market for it has fallen so badly it is no longer viable.”
Ms Williams urged the South Australian Government to increase the statewide 10c container scheme to include more plastics and prevent the items from heading to landfill.
“People want to recycle as much as they can and it is not a good view on the industry when a lot of the non-deposit products are ending up in landfill,” she said.
“There needs to be some kind of consistency across the board with the deposit scheme because I do not understand why glass bottles are able to be refunded but wine bottles cannot.”
Ms Williams said despite the scheme being in place four decades ago, a great amount of non-deposit containers enter the business.
She said small apricot cans are available for the deposit scheme, with the larger sized cans being non-disposable.
“It does not make sense to me,” she said.
“People do not understand they can receive a deposit on the smaller one but not the larger one which is time consuming for us.
“We need to be consistent at a regional level also and we simply need more support around here.”
Ms Williams said she would like to see a regional facility which recycles materials such as milk bottles and other non-deposit items.
“It will give us somewhere to take the items and it will be great for the environment as it will evade landfill,” she said.
“They could make chairs and other bits and pieces out of them we see it happening everywhere now.
“We are a community service here and we do what we can to assist the community by providing bins that can be used at events but we need further support on a regional level.”
