A simple back yard landscaping job became something more complicated for Steve Douglas when he discovered a top dressing applied to his lawn in the NSW southern highlands was littered with glass, plastic and other debris.
“As I watered the lawn, or when it rained, the finer materials would wash through to reveal debris and rubbish – plastic, glass fragments, glass shards, electrical wire fragments and lots of semi-degraded plastic bag fragments and oyster shells,” Douglas says.
“The glass was such that it would easily cut your feet if you were walking on the grass.”
Douglas and other consumers spoke to Guardian Australia about their experiences with contaminated soil products bought from landscape or garden stores.
One customer bought loose organic soil for a vegetable garden that was full of nails and screws. Another bought bags of potting mix from a garden chain that contained roof insulation and other building waste.
Guardian Australia has revealed in a series of stories that the New South Wales environment watchdog had known for more than a decade about widespread breaches by waste facilities that produce a type of cheap recycled soil fill known as recovered fines, which are made from construction and demolition waste residue.
The products are used in construction projects and on public spaces such as parks, and are sold to consumers for home landscaping jobs.
This week, the NSW Environment Protection Authority (EPA) chief executive Tony Chappel announced the regulator was considering “significant changes” to the rules that govern the sector after recent compliance inspections found seven out of 13 waste facilities had asbestos in their recovered fines stockpiles.
The NSW environment minster, Penny Sharpe, said she supported strengthened regulations for recovered materials.
“The only recovered material that should be ending up in our communities should be fully compliant and safe,” she said.
Victoria’s EPA has also announced a compliance blitz of facilities that make recovered fines.
Of the consumers who spoke to Guardian Australia, none bought a landscaping product that was labelled as containing recovered fines. Most said the products were not labelled as containing any type of recycled material but they found components of it were consistent with material that had been mixed with some kind of waste – be it building materials or food and garden organics – and poorly processed.
They say their experiences highlight problems with quality control and a lack of transparent labelling that would identify the source and composition of the materials.
Lack of transparency, poor regulation
Waste regulations differ from state to state. Products made from recycled materials are generally permitted to contain small amounts of a range of contaminants, up to set thresholds. In New South Wales, the environment watchdog is responsible only for regulating landscape products made of recycled materials. Other types of products are covered by consumer laws.
Douglas says neither the landscaper nor the retailer indicated the top dressing delivered to his home in Bundanoon last year was a recycled product. But excess contaminants – either from construction or green waste or a mix of both – were visible and became more evident each time it rained, “like a sifting process”.
The other immediately noticeable feature was the soil’s odour. Douglas, an ecologist, tested its pH level and found it was strongly alkaline.
He contacted his landscaper and reported the contamination to the EPA. But neither the landscape contractor, the retailer nor the wholesaler admitted being the source.
The wholesaler replaced the soil “as an act of goodwill”, but said the product used was not consistent with the company’s top dressing.
The EPA investigated but said it was unable to determine the cause or source of the contamination.
Douglas says his experience highlights a lack of transparency about what landscaping soil contains, poor regulation of industries that produce and sell the products, and poor traceability in the event of contamination.
“A consumer should not need to have technical qualifications in soil science or waste management to know what it is they’re getting,” he says.
“You can’t tell where the soil is coming from because there’s no tracking records that would enable the regulator or consumer to know who is responsible.”
‘I thought organic would mean clean soil’
Melissa Barrass started a vegetable garden at her Newcastle home at the height of the pandemic. In 2021, she ordered loose organic soil from a large landscape retailer in the region. Guardian Australia has not named the retailer because it has since changed hands but the store confirmed it was aware of past issues with the product and was examining its supply chains.
“I thought organic would mean clean soil but it was just littered with metal and plastics,” Barrass says.
“I was pulling out screws, nails, hard and soft plastics. There were quite a lot of nails.”
She says she was concerned that the product she bought might be used at a childcare centre or playground.
“Nails are sharp. Kids play in the dirt. We shouldn’t be finding that sort of thing in there,” she says.
Western Sydney resident Ben Engel says his two-year-old son stepped on a piece of glass after he spread loose organic top dressing from Flower Power on his lawn earlier this year.
He wrote to the retailer to complain, including pictures of large pieces of plastic and glass he said he found in the product.
This product is described online as being made from 50% composted organics and comes with a disclaimer that it may be contaminated with some “small” particles of glass and plastic that can not be removed through the “sifting process”.
Engel says Flower Power was reluctant to give him a refund at first and claims it told him he would not be eligible for future refunds if he again bought the product and found it was contaminated, because he was now “informed of the risks”.
“I have children and I can’t have them walking on this stuff,” he says. “It’s just dangerous.
“I was angry. It was ridiculous. You can’t sell products that harm your customer.
“They have to source their material from somewhere else … that’s not going to have contaminants in it,” Engels says. “Or they need to improve their sifting technology so that it truly removes all dangerous contaminants from the green waste.”
Flower Power did not respond to a request for comment.
Academic Dr Luke Gahan says he had more than one bad experience with potting mix he bought from Bunnings.
Gahan, who lives in Ballarat, says he bought Garden Essentials potting mix from the chain in 2019. He bought a similar product a couple of years later.
On both occasions, he says, he noticed “lots of contaminants” in the products and what appeared to be building waste, including glass, electrical wire, metal pieces, painted wood, and what seemed to be roof insulation.
Gahan says Bunnings was reluctant to give him a refund at first and he believes the product should be immediately discontinued.
“But I also think there needs to be regulations around potting mix,” he says. “The government does need to regulate this industry.”
The Bunnings merchandise director, Cam Rist, said the company’s potting mix products met all relevant standards and its suppliers complied with environmental laws.
“There’s nothing more important to us than team and customer safety, including the products we sell,” he said.
“We’ve got strong relationships with our suppliers whose quality control processes are routinely audited to ensure their products are safe to sell, including annual audits from our compliance team.”
An EPA spokesperson said producers of recycled products using recovered materials must adhere to strict regulations.
Anyone concerned about a product they had bought should immediately contact the supplier they bought it from, they said.
