MOUNT Gambier’s largest recycling operator is no longer taking cardboard from businesses and the general public free of charge amid markets plummeting for the recyclable material.
Green Triangle Recyclers – which operates adjacent the city’s waste transfer centre – says it is no longer viable to freight cardboard to metropolitan markets.
With its cardboard stockpile mushrooming at its Eucalypt Drive depot, the company says it has no choice but to charge businesses and the general public to offload this material.
The decision – swept in on Monday – comes just weeks from Christmas, which traditionally sees the amount of cardboard taken to the depot skyrocket.
With the company taking thousands of tonnes of cardboard/paper each year, this material may now head to landfill if the market does not rebound.
Considered as a major setback in the city’s recycling efforts, Green Triangle Recyclers proprietor Ian Weber said the business – which employed 20 people – had no option but to make this decision if it wanted to remain viable.
“We did not want to make this decision, but if we did not we could go broke,” Mr Weber said yesterday.
He said it was likely the material would go to the “tip” unless new options were found.
Mr Weber – who has been in the industry for decades – said he hoped the community and businesses would understand given the complexities within the troubled recycling industry.
“It is a very difficult industry,” he explained.
Green Triangle Recyclers manager Wayne Ousey yesterday gave The Border Watch a tour of the facility, including the expanding stockpile of cardboard and paper.
“We used to get top dollar for cardboard, but now it is close to zero and we have to pay $1350 to put it on the truck and freight it.”
He said the Port Melbourne business was no longer taking the material because they had “too much stock”.
Mr Ousey said there was already 250 tonnes of paper/cardboard material mixture stockpiled at the Green Triangle Recycling depot.
“We are running out of room. One day if we cannot move the material, then this yard is going to be chockers.”
He said the market in Adelaide for pure cardboard had also tumbled and “we are now getting nothing for it”
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Mr Ousey said the cardboard/paper side of the business was previously lucrative, but the market and prices had crashed in the past couple of months.
“It was really good for the pure cardboard and the paper/cardboard material,” Mr Ousey said.
But he said the freight costs and payment for the material at this time meant it was not viable.
While hoping it was just a “hitch”, he warned there was no clear indication when the cardboard market could recover.
“We are not getting any money for it, so there is no point shipping it. All these things always seem to happen around Christmas time,” Mr Ousey said.
He said the company was now charging businesses $60 per tonne and the general community with a ute or trailer load a $20 fee.
“We are happy to take cardboard from businesses if they pay a fee. It is set up with Cleanaway and Veolia – it will need to be weighed.”
He said people could continue to put cardboard into their kerbside recycling bin given this would continue to be sorted.
“Some people in the past have driven past and offloaded four or five boxes – I do not want to say to people they can no longer do this, but we have to be financially sustainable.”
While there was a market for the milk bottles, he said the company was also grasping what to do with the mountainous piles of soft plastics, particularly plastic bags.
“We cannot move shopping bags and plastic. We are stockpiling this material, which comes through the kerbside recycling line,” Mr Ousey said.
He urged people to limit their use of plastic bags given there was no market for the material.
“There is a market for milk bottles – they make them into plastic pallets and we can get rid of steel tins.”
