Australia's landfill problem is escalating with recycling efforts failing to keep pace with ever increasing mountains of waste, a new report shows.
The National Waste Report , published every two years since 2010, confirms once again that the nation's waste burden is growing.
But Australia's recycling rate isn't moving, and the recovery rate for plastic is the lowest of all waste types.
In 2020/21 financial year, the nation generated an estimated 75.8 million tonnes of waste - up three per cent on 2018/19 fiscal year.
That's the equivalent of 2.95 tonnes of waste for every adult and child in the country.
Despite the rise, the recycling rate has remained stagnant at 60 per cent.
Recycling and recovery rates were highest for metals at 87 per cent, building materials 81 per cent, paper and cardboard 62 per cent, organics 58 per cent, and glass 59 per cent.
But one of the greatest environmental scourges - plastic - is last in the recovery race, with just 13 per cent diverted from landfill.
The largest waste categories were building and demolition materials at 25.2 million tonnes, organics 14.4 million tonnes, ash 12 million tonnes and hazardous waste 7.4 million tonnes, most of it contaminated soil.
Plastic accounted for 2.6 million million tonnes, up from 2.5 million tonnes.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek says the new federal government is working to bridge the gap between increasing waste production, and stagnant recycling and recovery rates.
"We know that the way we are doing things now is not sustainable," she says.
"Australians want to reduce their waste and use fewer disposable items in the first place - but we have to set up our economy to help them do this."
She says part of that will be reducing the use of plastic in the first place and creating markets for ongoing reuse of waste, something state and territory environment ministers committed to in October.
"There are 3.3 times more jobs in recycling for every job in landfill. That's why we're investing $250 million in infrastructure and state-of-the-art advanced recycling solutions to sort, process and re-manufacture plastic, glass, paper, and tyres into valuable new products."
