Waste and recycling business essentials
Published by Green Industries SA as part of its business support program. Rawtec contributed to this work.
Summary published
The starting guide for a South Australian business that has never looked closely at its own waste bill. Its most useful page is the one that breaks that bill into three separate components, because two of them can be reduced and most businesses are quoted only the total.
Collection costs cover wages, trucks and bins. The SA solid waste levy applies to every tonne sent to landfill and to nothing that is recycled. Processing and disposal costs sit on top. Ask a provider to itemise those three and the diversion business case writes itself.
The guide also puts SA’s recovery in context. The state recovered 4.34 million tonnes in 2018–19, and 86% of it was processed in South Australia — only 7% went overseas.
Materials recovered in SA, 2018–19
Recycled within South Australia
Item categories banned from SA landfill
Container deposit refund per container
What a business needs to know
The levy is the part you control
“The SA solid waste levy is a charge on every tonne of waste sent to landfill. Recycled material does not attract the levy.” Every tonne diverted removes a levy charge as well as a disposal charge — which is why the diversion case is stronger than the gate rate alone suggests.
Six things are already banned from landfill
Electronic waste, oil, fluorescent lights, hazardous waste, whitegoods and lead acid batteries. A business still putting any of these in a general bin has a compliance problem, not just a cost problem.
Measure two numbers, not one
Total waste generated in tonnes or kilograms, and the diversion rate as a percentage of total generation. Tonnage alone hides whether you are improving; a rate alone hides whether you are growing.
Nine service streams are available
Commingled recycling, container deposit containers at 10 cents each, organics, paper and cardboard, soft plastics, e-waste, printer cartridges, batteries and lighting. Most businesses use two or three of the nine.
What is recovered in SA is mostly heavy
Of the 4.34 million tonnes, masonry is 1,394 kilotonnes (32%), soil 1,216 kt (28%) and organics 1,040 kt (24%). Metals are 329 kt, cardboard and paper 229 kt, glass 74 kt and plastics 31 kt — 0.7% by weight. Plastics dominate the conversation and almost none of the tonnage.
If you lease, timing is everything
“The best time to arrange new services is before signing or renewing a lease.” Otherwise the choice is to trial a service and prove it works, or take on the cost and responsibility of organising it yourself.
In a shared building, three parties have to agree
Building managers contract and manage the services, cleaners supply bin liners and manage contamination, and tenants make sure staff use the system properly. A recycling stream fails if any one of the three is not on board — which is why the guide tells tenants to talk to the other tenants first.
Where to start
Current services and whether they match what is actually needed. Bin sizes and collection frequencies often reflect a business two sizes ago.
What actually happens to the waste and recyclable material once it leaves. The answer sometimes changes the service you want.
Service provider reports and invoices are the baseline data. Nothing can be measured without them.
The guide is blunt about the hierarchy: “Avoiding and Reducing waste is the best option.” Recycling is the fourth-best answer, not the first.
This is an introductory guide rather than a technical one, and it carries no printed date — the recovery data in it is 2018–19, so the figures should be treated as a snapshot of that year. The SA waste levy rate has risen since. Product stewardship schemes it references include MobileMuster, Cartridges 4 Planet Ark and Fluorocycle.
Related work
Other guidance for organisations managing their own waste.
The full guide covers the waste hierarchy, the levy, landfill bans, all nine service streams and the leased-premises section.
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