City of Melville to call on Federal Government to implement product stewardship for waste

A Perth council wants new national rules and charges that would push the cost of dealing with rubbish back to industries at the start of the waste-production cycle.

The City of Melville will take the idea to a national assembly of councils in July, having greenlit the idea on Tuesday night.

It calls on the Government to implement “effective product stewardship” for priority materials like electronic waste, tyres, mattresses and packing, encouraging waste avoidance and end of life recovery.

If adopted at a Federal Government level, the idea would almost certainly see the cost price of certain materials rise to cover recycling measures.

Such schemes are already established in countries like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan.

Cr Karen Wheatland said the Melville motion was borne out of a lack of a national framework and because voluntary or co-regulatory schemes were not meeting the costs of recycling.

“It’s about taking urgent action to implement effective, funded mandatory product stewardship schemes for priority materials,” she said.

“The objective of this is to increase producer responsibility.

“Essentially we (local governments) end up bearing the actual costs of managing these problematic materials and products.”

She said effective product stewardship would ensure producers had a financial or physical responsibility for products at their end of life.

While it is logical the sector responsible for rubbish disposal would push for a cleaner, cost-aversion future, even at Melville this idea did not win universal support.

Cr Jane Edinger pushed back because there wasn’t “enough detail” about what the idea entailed.

Cr Jennifer Spanebroek said the Federal Government should be focused on determining what foreign materials made up imported products, but ultimately supported the motion.

“Even though this is very nice, but if anything the Australian Government should actually be looking at putting the onus on our suppliers because we import a lot of products into this country,” Cr Spanebroek said.

“It’s actually what is in that product — you cannot rely on manufacturers and suppliers of that good.”

Cr Tomas Fitzgerald said taking the idea to the national assembly was an opportunity for more to be done from a local policy level.

“This asks the Federal Government to take more seriously a cost that is currently on our balance sheet,” he said.

“This is an advocacy position.”

Cr Wheatland said product stewardship was “critically important” for the future of local governments.

“This is getting the Federal Government to fund the education or legislation around producers becoming responsible to produce products that have an end of life outcome that is not detrimental and going to landfill,” she said.

An officer’s advice note said while the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water already administered product stewardship through a range of schemes, it had “varying levels of effectiveness” across industries, with local government bearing the “ultimate cost” of disposal.

“This is particularly relevant and timely, given the upcoming Federal election,” the advice note said.

The motion was passed 10-2.