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Like many countries around the world, Victoria has relied on international markets to accept some recovered material. Long-term, waste reduction and avoidance will assist to ensure the circumstances of the past 18 months are not repeated. At the same time, all Victorians need to take a different approach to waste. Victoria’s recycling and resource recovery sector needs to respond to the immediate challenges facing the sector and deal with upcoming changes in national policy. Responding to these challenges requires a combination of short and long-term initiatives. This leaves Victoria vulnerable to commercial or global shifts. Market concentration also means there is little incentive for operators to improve and limited redundancy in the sector. In Victoria, particularly metropolitan Melbourne, the recovery and processing sector is concentrated, so there is limited competition. In the past 18 months, Victoria has seen recyclable material being sent to landfill after a major materials recovery operator closed. In developing our advice, we polled community members and found that a quarter of Victorians we surveyed believe their recycling goes to landfill. Some recyclable material is still being landfilled and some Victorians have become sceptical about the fate of their recycling. Since 2015, the Victorian Government has invested more than $135 million in supporting the recycling and resource recovery sector in Victoria, to ensure continuity of service to Victorians and to minimise the likelihood of otherwise recoverable material being sent to landfill. Victoria’s recycling resource recovery system is under pressure.
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