Environment - PNEB - Newspaper and Magazine Recycling

Sustainable Resources

Research & Education

Waste (continued)

Diverting Waste from Landfill

One of the success stories of Australian newspaper recycling has been the volumes of newsprint diverted from landfill. This can be measured in two ways:

the actual volume diverted; and
a report against the general target for all waste defined in Government policy - in which a 50% reduction in volume going to landfill was sought between 1990 and 2000.

The amount of newsprint sent to landfills in 1990 is estimated at 367,824 tonnes. This assumes that the recycling volume in that year was as reported (194,355 tonnes) and that 6.9% of newsprint consumed was used for other uses around the home – lighting fires, garden mulch, home composting etc - as estimated by Nolan ITU (DON’T WASTE THE NEWS: Recovering More Newspapers for Recycling – Profiles and Strategies conducted in October 2001).

In 2005 we calculate that only 139,000 tonnes of old newspapers ended up in landfill, which means that only 17.7% of the newsprint used in Australia ended up in landfill that year.

The total waste stream to landfill in Australia has risen from 12.3 million tonnes in 1990 to about 22.7 million tonnes in 2003. Over the period newspapers have gone from 3.0 per cent of national landfill volumes to about 0.65 per cent.

Percentage of newspapers going to landfill nationally each year