The toxic grey smoke that roiled out from the fire-gutted remains of the recycling centre at Hume is that type that sticks to your clothing and hair with chewing gum-like tenacity.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Those nasty petroleum-based polymers and plastics, together with the glues and resins that bind many of the cardboard products, are expected to smoulder for days.
Boy, it really stinks.
It's smellier, in fact, than the stink emanating from the giant hole in the ground near Tarago where about 30 per cent of Sydney's putrescible waste is sent down in leaky railcars and dumped every single night.
The clingy grey nastiness that's wafting out over Hume, down into the Tuggeranong Valley and across the border offers us a timely reminder that responsible waste management shouldn't end when you close the lid on your bin and hand the issue on to someone else.
Now as a result of the Hume fire, the ACT government - after some vigorous flag-waving in recent years about its recycling efforts - has a very big problem on its hands.
As fire investigators begin picking over the Hume site looking for clues to Monday night's ignition, people all over Canberra will be rolling their crammed-to-the-brim yellow-topped recycling bins out to the kerbside.
READ MORE:
Every parent knows Christmas time always brings plenty of extra packaging. But where the wrapping paper from this festive season will end up now is anyone's guess.
This has happened before - and with disastrous results.
Back in January 2019, WorkSafe ACT shut down the Hume processing plant after it identified a number of hazards, including blocked fire exits, missing guard rails and not enough fire extinguishers.
As a result of that shutdown, between 200 and 250 tonnes of recyclable yellow bin material was dumped into the Mugga landfill rather than being kept at the facility for processing. The operators said there wasn't enough space to store it.
Without the Hume plant to process and condense Canberra's recyclables - about 58,000 tonnes of it a year - the volume grows exponentially.
Australia has a big problem with its waste. While we like to consider ourselves good recycling citizens, by the standards of other countries like Denmark, Japan and The Netherlands, we're simply not.
Our so-called circular economy is confected. Nationally, our plastics recycling has been stuck at 16 per cent for four years.
In early November, recycling agency REDcycle stopped collecting and processing soft plastics - mostly shopping bags in much-trumpeted "stewardship" campaigns - from Woolies and Coles. REDcycle had been stockpiling tonnes of this waste in warehouses because it couldn't process any of it.
New international agreements on recycling mean the federal government will co-invest, as it has with the ACT, in processing and remanufacturing.
But building the required infrastructure takes time. Meanwhile, the plastic keeps piling up. Now the ACT is going to find out just how quickly those piles of plastic grow.
