{"id":682436,"date":"2026-05-20T06:40:27","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T06:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/682436\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T06:40:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T06:40:27","slug":"visy-recycling-plant-still-leaves-smell-over-reservoir-after-years-of-complaints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/682436\/","title":{"rendered":"Visy recycling plant still leaves smell over Reservoir after years of complaints"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are days Chris Wilkinson pulls into his Reservoir driveway and immediately shuts himself inside his house.<\/p>\n

“I’ll come home from work and I’ll be like, ‘I’ll go for a quick walk’ and then it smacks you in the face,” Mr Wilkinson said.<\/p>\n

“Even when you shut your doors and the windows and everything, it still manages to get into the house.”<\/p>\n

The Wilkinson family has lived opposite the Visy paper recycling plant since just before the COVID pandemic hit.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Chris Wilkinson says family homes long predate the recycling plant in Reservoir. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Mr Wilkinson said the odour emitted from the factory ranges from “a dry papery smell” to “like a bacteria, yoghurt, fermenting kind of a smell”.<\/p>\n

“During the lockdowns, it was unbelievable. It was 24\/7,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Not being able to escape it was a form of torture.”Company says there’s ‘no simple solution’<\/p>\n

Reservoir resident Frieda, who did not want her surname used, lives further away from the mill than Mr Wilkinson.<\/p>\n

But even at several hundred metres distance, she said the odour affected her breathing and caused her to cough on an almost daily basis.<\/p>\n

“You can’t go outside, I don’t even want to let my dog breathe this,” Frieda said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Residents say the odour emitted from the Visy paper recycling facility in Reservoir leaves them trapped inside their homes. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)<\/p>\n

“You cannot put your laundry outside and sometimes it’s from early morning to early evening, like days in a row.<\/p>\n

“It’s just horrendous and it affects your mental health.”<\/p>\n

The odour from the paper mill is not a new issue.<\/p>\n

The Reservoir facility was built in 1983 and it now turns more than 800,000 tonnes of material from residential kerbside recycling bins and commercial sources into recycled paper each year.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Inside the Visy paper recycling mill in Reservoir. (Facebook: Visy)<\/p>\n

It is a water intensive process.<\/p>\n

The heat and chemicals used in Visy’s recycled water operation produce sulphides and volatile fatty acids which carry an odour when released into the air through the facility’s ventilation stacks.<\/p>\n

“While Visy has already undertaken substantial on-site work to reduce odour, there is still problem-solving work to do,” the company says on its website.<\/p>\n

“There is no single simple solution. It will take time to get the combination of odour management strategies right.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Visy adopted an odour control program in late 2020. (Facebook: Visy)<\/p>\n

The ABC repeatedly sought comment from Visy but did not receive a response.<\/p>\n

The company adopted an odour control program in December 2020, which included initiatives to reduce the amount of bacteria produced in its water system.<\/p>\n

It has built higher ventilation stacks and increased the velocity of water vapour discharge to improve dispersion and reduce the intensity of the odour at ground level.<\/p>\n

That work was completed in late October 2021, in consultation with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA).<\/p>\n

\"White<\/p>\n

Residents say taller ventilation stacks at Visy’s Reservoir plant are not high enough to disperse the odour. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)<\/p>\n

But Mr Wilkinson and Freida said the stacks were still not high enough and there has only been marginal improvements.<\/p>\n

“They’re trying to fit new things onto a factory that’s [decades] old,” Mr Wilkinson said.<\/p>\n

“It’s basically band-aids. It’s not a cure.”<\/p>\n

‘Serious and comprehensive’ look at zoning needed, says urban planner<\/p>\n

Mr Wilkinson said he wanted Visy to move the recycling plant out of Reservoir, which he said was in “completely the wrong place”.<\/p>\n

“They can’t fix the problem, they’ve admitted it themselves,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Visy says it will take time “to get the combination of odour management strategies right”. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)<\/p>\n

“My house was built in the 1950s \u2014 the residents were there first.”<\/p>\n

Monash University professor of urban planning Carl Grodach said there was an argument that operations like Visy’s paper recycling were no longer appropriate in that location.<\/p>\n

Professor Grodach described Victoria’s industrial zoning regulations as antiquated.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think the zoning has been reviewed in a serious and comprehensive way in ages,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Visy has recycled paper in Reservoir since 1983. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)<\/p>\n

“Victoria has a new strategic 10-year industrial plan and it is entirely focused on expanding industrial space in the outer suburbs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It completely ignores inner and middle suburban land and these types of land use conflicts.”<\/p>\n

Professor Grodach said Visy had shown it was possible to move large operations such as its recycled glass manufacturing plant from inner Brisbane<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Visy should eventually move [from Reservoir],” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But there are a lot of other smaller and lower impact industrial activities that need that inner\/middle space and are dealing with similar conflicts because planning is behind the times.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Carl Grodach says Visy should eventually move its paper recycling operation out of Reservoir. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

The local state MP Nathan Lambert has been engaging with residents over the odour from the Visy site, including regularly doorknocking homes.<\/p>\n

“It is a common occurrence to talk to one person who says, ‘look, I don’t smell anything at all, there’s no issue’ and then literally next door have someone say, ‘this is a really strong smell and I’m thinking of moving out’,” he said.<\/p>\n

“You do get quite a mix of views.”<\/p>\n

He agreed that the work Visy and the EPA had done over several years had not eliminated the problem.<\/p>\n

“While things have improved, there are still a significant number of residents who are experiencing an odour and, particularly for some when a warmer northerly wind comes through, that’s making their lives quite unpleasant.<\/p>\n

“That’s not an acceptable situation,” Mr Lambert said.<\/p>\n

\"Blue<\/p>\n

The government doesn’t think Victoria’s industrial zoning laws need to change. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)<\/p>\n

But he said the state government had already “significantly overhauled” Victoria’s industrial planning laws, requiring corporations to manage pollution, including odours.<\/p>\n

“Planning laws move so slowly,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Of course, you could think about reforming them, but I suppose that would not be something that would change the set of circumstances that we’re finding up in north-west Reservoir.”<\/p>\n

A state government spokesperson said Victoria’s planning laws gave industries and communities clear directions about land usage in inner and outer suburbs.<\/p>\n

“We’ve modernised planning for industrial land to give clearer rules about where industry should operate, protect important industrial areas and help manage the impact on nearby communities,” they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are days Chris Wilkinson pulls into his Reservoir driveway and immediately shuts himself inside his house. “I’ll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,329102,167402,75,21827,329103,288544,154210,42568,3810,35712,128,24239,135470],"class_list":["post-682436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-coburg-north","tag-darebin","tag-environment","tag-epa","tag-fawkner","tag-merribek","tag-odour","tag-plant","tag-recycling","tag-reservoir","tag-science","tag-smell","tag-visy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}