{"id":903307,"date":"2026-09-24T04:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T04:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903307\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T04:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T04:18:15","slug":"rockhampton-council-warns-escalating-costs-prevent-it-hitting-recycling-targets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/903307\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockhampton Council warns escalating costs prevent it hitting recycling targets"},"content":{"rendered":"

A regional Queensland council is warning it cannot meet state-imposed recycling targets with the growing cost of moving materials hundreds of kilometres for processing.<\/p>\n

Each year 10,000 tonnes of household recyclables collected from the Rockhampton region are driven 600 kilometres to a facility on the Sunshine Coast.<\/p>\n

Waste services cost the local council $3 million per year with more than one-third of that bill going to transportation fees.<\/p>\n

In June, the Queensland government released its waste strategy and set an overall recycling target of 65 per cent by 2035<\/a>, with major regional communities including Rockhampton expected to halve the amount of waste it sent to landfill.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The Queensland government has set an overall recycling target of 65 per cent by 2035. (ABC News: Ellie Willcox)<\/p>\n

Rockhampton Mayor Tony Williams said his council was struggling to improve recycling rates, especially as fuel prices soared.<\/p>\n

“We’ve done our waste plans and [our staff] are saying that we can’t achieve the targets that the state government is putting onto councils,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a really difficult position for councils to be in (because) if we increase the volumes of recycling, it just costs us more to transport it.”<\/p>\n

Recyclables from central Queensland households were previously processed at a private materials recovery facility in Rockhampton.<\/p>\n

But that was destroyed by a battery fire in 2020.<\/p>\n

The council has so far been unable to attract private companies to develop a similar facility.<\/p>\n

\"Truck<\/p>\n

The council has been unable to find a firm to develop a materials recovery facility locally. (ABC Radio Canberra: Jolene Laverty)<\/p>\n

Mayor Williams said the local government spent about $300 per tonne to send its recyclables for processing, compared to about $100 a tonne for councils in south-east Queensland.<\/p>\n

“The cookie-cutter approach to increasing recycling really doesn’t help when the tyrannies of distance and the cost to transport that material is ever-increasing,” he said.<\/p>\n

“With the state government wishing to increase recycling locally, there’s no real [financial] benefit unless we get some subsidies towards those transport costs.”<\/p>\n

In a statement, state environment minister Andrew Powell said the government was providing support for recycling in regional areas, with $11 million in new funding for infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The government was also designing a new fund to be spent on helping regional councils send recycling for processing.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The state government is hoping a new fund can help regional councils send recycling for processing. (ABC Gold Coast: Dominic Cansdale)<\/p>\n

Calls for national reforms<\/p>\n

Australian Council of Recycling chief Suzanne Toumbourou said the federal government should never have shelved national packaging reforms<\/a>, which would have eased the burden on regional communities.<\/p>\n

“It’s extraordinarily disappointing to see that lack of progress in packaging reform,” Ms Toumbourou said.<\/p>\n

“We should have had regulatory certainty about the fact that burden would be shared much better across the supply chain and much more responsibility would be placed on producers.”<\/p>\n

In a statement, federal environment minister Murray Watt said the government’s focus was to work with state and territory governments to reduce waste by harmonising packaging and recycling policy in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A regional Queensland council is warning it cannot meet state-imposed recycling targets with the growing cost of moving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[91180,64,63,2467,75,25272,13404,471534,471533,3810,10589,128,11942,16861,20266],"class_list":["post-903307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-andrew-powell","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-council","tag-environment","tag-environment-minister","tag-murray-watt","tag-national-packaging-reforms","tag-recyclable-material","tag-recycling","tag-rockhampton","tag-science","tag-sunshine-coast","tag-transport","tag-waste-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903307","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=903307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}