Plans to transport contents of ACT yellow bins to Sydney after Hume recycling fire to cost thousands per day

Mr Steel announced approximately 36 tonnes of stockpiled recyclables were being taken to an Enfield facility each day, following a fire which gutted the Hume Material Recovery Facility last week.

That facility generally took in 200 tonnes a day from ACT households, commercial recycling and six NSW councils.

"A small portion of that material, it's possible that it could be landfill," Mr Steel said.

"But we're still storing the material on site, and as we continue to transport that material interstate, we'll be assessing how much of that material can be recycled."

Mr Steel said the fire had been a "significant setback for recycling in the ACT and the whole region".

"Unfortunately, transportation will mean extra transport emissions that will be created, and it's an incredibly inefficient process because that material is not processed and baled here in the ACT," he said.

The government is spending up to $3060 per day to transport recycling to Sydney, with costs to increase further as it attempts to get through a stockpile of 1270 tonnes of material.

"It is around $75 to $85 per tonne, so that's a significant additional cost that we don't currently have to pay in the ACT," Mr Steel said.

The processing costs for recyclables, which were about $60 per tonne in the ACT, are also expected to rise.

Those figures will continue to grow as more trucks come online to transport a stockpile of 1270 tonnes of material (according to a January 4 assessment) out of Canberra.

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By January 16, recycling contractor Re.group plans to increase the current number of trucks transporting material from four a day, to 11 to 12.

"That will be enough to start moving all the throughput that comes through from the yellow bin contents, commercial, and the regions and then also then to reduce that stockpile," Deputy Director general of Transport Canberra City Services Jim Corrigan said.

The government is also assessing whether part of the Hume warehouse could still be operational for baling some materials, and bringing a Mitchell site online to handle and process materials from the container deposit scheme.

The ACT government has also said it will try to bring forward the completion of a new recycling facility in Hume, expected to be operational by late 2024.

However, Mr Corrigan was unable to say whether that project could be expedited.

He said the facility would take "at least a couple of years" to open, the same timeline originally planned.

"There's a lot of work to be done, we've got to work out the best technology, those sorts of things, the approval processes, procurement processes. It's at least a couple of years," he said.

Asked whether he expected the facility to open at the end of 2024 or later, he said: "It's hard to say, we'll work as quickly as we can."

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