Diverting waste from landfill

One of the success stories of Australian newspaper recycling has been the volumes of newsprint diverted from landfill. In 1990, it was estimated that 367,824 tonnes was sent to landfill. In 2005, this had dropped to around 139,000 tonnes of old newspapers.

Interestingly, this compares very favourably with the results of all other wastes. The total waste stream that was sent to landfill in Australia has risen from 12.3 million tonnes in 1990 to about 22.7 million tonnes in 2003 and almost double that in 2009. Over this same period, newspapers have gone from 3.0 per cent of national landfill volumes to about 0.65 per cent. This pleasing trend has continued since 2003.