Tasmania’s economic competitiveness will increasingly depend on industrial waste solutions, writes Nick Gifford
Tasmania has long grappled with balancing economic growth and environmental management. Today, modern waste solutions offer a clear path forward, aligning the necessity of industrial efficiency and environmental sustainability with economic opportunity.
While the Tasmanian Government has implemented significant reform in recent years critical gaps in waste infrastructure continue to undermine environmental outcomes, constrain growth in crucial industries, and erode confidence in the waste-management systems that underpin our economy.
Often unnoticed in everyday life, effective waste management underpins the success of major Tasmanian industries such as manufacturing, tourism, hospitality, agriculture, aquaculture, and minerals processing. Community confidence in these job-rich sectors is crucial to Tasmania’s economic future – and that confidence relies on reliable, wellregulated waste systems.
As these sectors continue to evolve – both here and globally – Tasmania’s economic competitiveness will increasingly depend on industrial waste solutions that drive resource recovery, reduce impacts, boost market confidence, and unlock new income streams.
For Tasmania to achieve its ambitious waste diversion and emissions reduction targets, ongoing investment in modern waste infrastructure is essential. Inadequate management of organic waste, in particular, contributes to challenges such as odour and leachate generation – leading to increased costs, compliance requirements, and regulatory restrictions for operators and waste producers.
Without new investment, much of the state’s waste will remain dependent on outdated practices such as land spreading, shallow burial, and stockpiling – methods that often fall short of modern environmental standards and community expectations.
Each year, Tasmania produces more than 800,000 tonnes of organic waste, yet only a small proportion is treated through advanced, closedloop processing facilities.
The state’s capacity to manage wet and volatile organics – such as food waste, agricultural residues, commercial organics, and biosolids – remains limited.
This is not just an environmental failure, but an economic one. Valuable materials that could be transformed into energy or soil products are often lost to low-value disposal methods, missing significant economic, environmental, and community gains.
The introduction of a waste levy in Tasmania creates an opportunity to reshape the state’s waste economy by reducing disposal and accelerating investment in modern resource recovery. With strategic reinvestment of levy funds into fit-for-purpose infrastructure, Tasmania will drive construction, create skilled jobs, generate new income streams, and build long-term environmental and economic resilience. To maximise the benefit, levy funding must prioritise infrastructure projects that materially increase regional capacity and resource recovery outcomes, at scale.
By prioritising long-term infrastructure investments, Tasmania can establish strategically located waste-management precincts featuring closed-loop energy and advanced resource recovery systems. These precincts represent a new model for sustainable industrial development, driving efficiencies across the state. Co-locating industryoperated processing and manufacturing facilities within these precincts further streamlines logistics, reduces transport costs and emissions, and fosters greater collaboration across the economy.
At Southern Waste Solutions (SWS), Tasmania’s largest integrated waste manager, we are investing in this critical transition. Backed by our owner councils, SWS operates advanced recovery and landfill facilities – including Tasmania’s only contaminated-waste cell – and generates renewable electricity from biogas, supplying power to more than 2000 homes.
Recent initiatives – such as our $10m redevelopment of the Lutana Resource Recovery Centre – is positioning SWS as a centralised hub for sorting, consolidation and valueadded resource recovery.
SWS is now moving to its next stage of development with plans to establish the Advanced Organics Facility within its regionally significant Copping Waste Precinct.
This facility will process organic waste into renewable energy, biomethane, electricity, and value-added products such as soil enhancers and fertilisers, creating a scalable model for circular economy growth.
Realising the full potential of Tasmania’s emerging waste economy will require forward-thinking leadership, consistent policy direction, and sustained investment in transformative infrastructure. A coordinated approach across government, industry, and the community is essential to support innovation, reduce environmental risks, and strengthen Tasmania’s reputation as a sustainable, innovative place to live, visit, and do business.