In my last article, I wrote about the connection between sustainability and economics.
Of course, politics has a lot to do with both. Without politics there would be no sustainability policy. There is a mutual dependency between politics and economics, as any government that gets the economics badly wrong is doomed. Everyone’s heard the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid”.
There are several direct connections between waste, the environment and sustainability and politics. Waste is a local government responsibility and, in effect, an essential service that has been to a large degree privatised.
One consequence of this privatisation is that a knowledge gap has developed within government of how this industry works and where there are gaps in infrastructure.
The NSW Minister for the Environment, Penny Sharpe, commented at the Waste 2025 conference in Coffs Harbour in May this year that she was surprised to learn that NSW had no waste infrastructure plan. Really? It was blatantly clear to the industry. There is no Government agency specifically tasked with planning waste infrastructure. Now Sydney is on the edge of a landfill crisis, as we are running out of landfill airspace.
Politics gets involved because, if our household red-lid bins don’t get picked up because we don’t know where to take our waste, all hell would break lose and politicians would be blamed, and rightly so.
At the same conference, the Minister also announced the establishment of an advisory council where industry would have a seat and say. This is really good news, as a direct line to the Minister’s office allows for views to be heard unfiltered. I recall asking for that here.
Politics has the problem that it always needs to balance perceptions with reality. Arguably, perceptions are more important in politics than reality, yet reality can be perception destroying.
If, for example, one government says that the interest rates will always be lower under their government and then they go up, then, oops.
In reality governments have limited impact on how the economy runs. Government sets the tone and the framework and they can spend money, raise or lower taxes, but the exact impact of those steps is not always predictable. There are so many factors that influence how an economy runs that any government can call itself lucky if all goes the way they wished for. If you have been around long enough, you know if it goes well, there is lots of beating of chests going on. If things don’t go to plan, then everyone looks for scapegoats.
If, for example, China stopped buying Australian iron ore and switched to Brazil, the impact on the Australian economy would be devastating. But it would never be the government’s fault. Yes, the Australian government can crawl to the Chinese government but, hey, there are no guarantees, right?
If another government suddenly decides to put tariffs on Australian goods, those goods would become more expensive in that country. Australian sales would likely go down, unless they can be diverted somewhere else. The Australian government could help by trying to establish new trade routes, but industry can do that as well and much faster. Trade treaties create artificial hurdles or open new markets, but they can’t protect from international competition. In some areas, markets are better regulators than government, but not everywhere.
In the environment and sustainability sectors the picture looks often different. One could even say that without government intervention, those sectors would not be around or relatively meaningless.
Nature cannot pay lobbyists
As I said in my previous article, without the waste levy, very little recycling would take place. Without policies that commit to waste diversion from landfill, there would be little to no incentive to find solutions for recycling or reuse of unwanted materials or goods.
Because politics and policies have such a big impact on the environment and sustainability sectors, politicians are well advised to keep their ear close to the ground, to find out what is happening and, sometimes even more importantly, what is not happening in these sectors.
For example: in 2021 the NSW government published an infrastructure guide telling us how many new landfills NSW (really: Sydney) needed to meet demand. What the government clearly did not understand was that industry had zero incentive to build new landfills, as I explained here.
Four years later, how many new landfills are in the planning pipeline? None. But the government sighed a very big sigh of relief when existing landfill operators said they could extend their current ones, if supported by government. Solution? No. Band aid? Yes.
We all hope that the new Advisory Panel for the NSW Environment Minister will have a positive impact.
Listening is the first step in establishing trust and understanding, as I said here.
Where government has a major role to play is to prepare us for the unpaid bill nature will present to us when payment has to be made for the uncounted costs of externalities.
What are externalities, you ask?
Here are two examples:
First example: imagine a mine extracting gold or copper ore from the ground. The mine is a hundred years old and somewhere in Far North Queensland. Large amounts of so-called overburden or tailings (that is the stuff not containing ore or separated from the ore) is left on site.
Australia has a lot of so-called acid-sulphate soils. These are soils that turn acidic when exposed to the elements. When it rains, the acid leaches into the ground or creeks and then rivers and then the sea. This goes on for a hundred years. No one ever paid any money to fix these issues.
Nowadays, mine operators must submit a financial guarantee securing the costs of the mine site rehabilitation. Or at least some of it. Metaphorically speaking, this is like putting band aids on a haemorrhaging wound. I read somewhere that Australia has some 80,000 old un-remediated mine sites and shafts, just “hanging around” for a better day.
For the old mine operator, the environment in which they dumped the overburden, was not part of their internal cost structure. The soil, the creek that got polluted, the fish that died – were all “external” issues.
Second example: It was not uncommon for Australian councils to dump household waste on remote beaches at low tide, waiting for the high tide to “take away” the waste. This was practiced in some areas until the late 1960s. The plastic waste dumped all those years ago is still floating somewhere in the oceans of our planet, slowly breaking apart into microplastics and then nanoplastics, eaten by fish, which are then caught and eaten by us. These nanoplastics then end up in our bodies, brains, veins and so on. Lovely! Now think about the rivers of plastic waste coming down some Asian rivers…
Our current prevailing political and economic culture is focussed on the short term and directly impact of what we do. What costs we have avoided this year? How much profit was made last quarter, and so on. Where we cannot point the finger and say with any certainty who will eat that fish and get a disease caused by this or that microplastic, we pretend there is no problem. Or we acknowledge there may be a problem but no one accepts responsibility.
Who owns the oceans? Who owns the air we breathe?
We are looking to governments to help solve these issues, as one day, someone will have to pay.
What do you say?
The typical response “let’s kick the can down the road” isn’t good enough anymore.