Is this the end of our kerbside recycling system?
It could very well be.
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Dr Trevor Thornton, a lecturer, hazardous materials management at Deakin University, says it's an each way bet.
"I’d say it’s 50/50," he says.
![Craig Reucassel examined recycling in his TV series The War on Waste.](http://web.archive.org./web/20180201034223im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/z/q/g/j/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.p4yz5g.png/1517451017090.jpg)
And it's been a very long time coming.
Recycling companies such as Visy, local government and environmental groups had warned the federal government, most recently during a 2017 Parliamentary inquiry into the waste and recycling industries in Australia. (It is due to report back in June).
The crisis following China's decision to ban imports of Australian paper and plastic waste from January 1 shouldn't surprise anyone.
"Kerbside recycling ... is fairly fragile and has been for a long, long time," Dr Thornton said.
If the system were to collapse, it would be very difficult to restart, he said.
The conundrum now facing local government and the recycling industry is whether to stockpile materials (which poses risks such as fire), send the material to landfill (bad for the environment) or find another country to export it to.
The cost to local government - especially in the form of landfill levies - would be enormous if councils were forced to dump recyclable materials.
That would inevitably result in the cost being passed on to households in the form of higher council rates.
“You can imagine if you got a letter to your household saying ‘Don’t put your recycling in the bin until further notice’,” Dr Thornton said.
“You would then just start putting it all in your waste bin, which would fill up because they’re smaller versions.
“And we’d probably end up with a lot of dumping and a lot of litter. It would be a horrendous problem.
“It’s potentially going to cause a lot of economic, environmental and health related issues.”
Craig Reucassel, who has brought the issue to the nation's attention with his ABC TV series The War on Waste, said the clampdown by China could present Australia with an opportunity to properly develop its own recycling industry.
"We have relied on China to take a lot of our recycling and that’s meant we haven’t really developed it enough at home."
The ban could also make people reassess the amount of waste they produce.
"The whole hierarchy is reduce, reuse, recycle," Reucassel said. "Recycle’s kind of the bottom step. The bigger challenge we face is how to reduce this waste that we create.
"I think longer term we really have to ... properly develop recycling.
"I think industry needs a lot more transparency," he said, adding that Woolworths changed its practices on recycling plastic bags after he discovered while filming his series that many were being stockpiled rather than reused.
"We’ll be doing another series on waste," Reucassel.
"Its sad in a way because this is a step backwards."
For Dr Thornton, the solution lies with government - local, state and federal - especially the Commonwealth in promoting the use of recycled materials in manfacturing.
"Governments in Australia need to step in and start encouraging [recycling ] through levies and taxes to encourage people to reuse materials," he said.
"We certainly in Australia are not purchasing materials that are made from recycled products."