Victoria's e-waste collection network: what the landfill ban needed
Prepared for Sustainability Victoria by Randell Environmental Consulting in partnership with Reincarnate and Rawtec. Authors Matt Genever, Paul Randell and Brock Baker. Final report 3 May 2018.
Summary published
Before Victoria banned e-waste from landfill, Sustainability Victoria needed to know whether people could reach a compliant collection site.
The project mapped every collection point in the state, ran drive-time analysis against 2016 census population, and assessed sites against the Australian standard for e-waste handling.
No new sites were needed. Of 148 sites assessed, seven met the standard.
Sites in the final collection network
Sites already compliant with AS/NZS 5377
Of regional Victorians within a 30-minute drive
Cost of the upgrades needed
What the mapping found
The existing network, drive-time coverage and consultation changes
Council-owned resource recovery centres numbered 269, plus 11 privately owned sites open to the public, 30 permanent household chemical drop-off sites, 245 national television and computer recycling collection points and over 700 MobileMuster sites. The report’s conclusion: no new sites will be required to support the ban.
The final 141-site network reaches 56% of Victorians within ten minutes, 96% within twenty and 98% within thirty. For regional Victoria specifically: 57%, 91% and 98%.
The draft network of 122 sites became 141 after consultation, a net 19 sites added to close geographic gaps. Regional twenty-minute coverage went from 89% to 91% and thirty-minute from 95% to 98%. Metropolitan ten-minute coverage did not move at all.
Compliance, upgrade costs and coverage gaps
Of 148 sites assessed, 135 accepted televisions and computers and only seven complied with the Australian standard. 131 of the 141 network sites needed infrastructure upgrades. The standard covers four things: avoiding breakage, weather protection, impermeable bunded surfaces and clear signage.
For the network’s primary and secondary sites: $11,004,483 for a four-bay skillion shed with 4.9 metre clearance, or $6,699,598 for a three-bay strip shed. Adding tertiary sites takes the total to $13.7 million high or $8.1 million low.
Using primary sites only, 28 of Victoria’s 79 local government areas had no designated site. Permanent drop-off site coverage in regional areas reached just 28% within ten minutes and 52% within twenty.
What it recommended
Fund permanent or semi-permanent enclosed shedding at network sites, prioritising compliance for televisions and computers. State funding of non-fixed infrastructure such as stillages, skip bins and shipping containers was specifically not recommended, because of the governance complexity.
Concentrate initial funding on the 131 network sites needing upgrades rather than spreading it across tertiary sites.
The 30 permanent household chemical collection sites already have suitable infrastructure and could take more than batteries and lights.
Keep council-owned resource recovery centres as the network core, with private sites filling targeted gaps.
Population coverage uses 2016 census data mapped to suburb centroids, so the outer parts of a suburb can fall outside a drive-time ring even when much of it is inside. Drive times assume average speeds across all road types, which the report describes as conservative. Cost estimates are indicative and will move with detailed design and site conditions. A population growth criterion was dropped from the final site scoring because it biased the result towards particular local government areas.
Related reports
Other infrastructure network analysis.
The full report includes the site-by-site multi-criteria analysis and the compliance assessment method.
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