Victorian Auditor-General’s report
29 June 2011

Municipal Solid Waste Management 

Audit summary
Australia is one of the highest waste generating countries in the world per head of population. Victoria ranks behind New South Wales and Queensland as the third largest contributor of solid waste. Population growth and increasing consumerism have led to increasing solid waste being generated, as our demand for products and services grows.
Traditionally, solid waste has been disposed of as garbage to landfills. Landfills pose risks to community health and safety associated with polluted water—leachate—contaminating ground and surface water; and producing methane—a flammable gas. Methane is also a greenhouse gas with the global warming potency of 21 times that of carbon dioxide, contributing around 3–4 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gases. The organic component of solid waste—garden and food waste—is the lead contributor to many of these risks.
Governments and communities are turning their attention to diverting materials from landfills to other uses, thereby reducing greenhouse gases, saving water and energy, cutting air pollution, and conserving resources and landfill space.
The 2005 Sustainability in Action: Towards Zero Waste Strategy (TZW) sets statewide objectives and targets to reduce the amount of solid waste generated, increase recovery rates for individual waste streams—thereby decreasing waste disposal to landfills—and to improve littering behaviours.
Conclusions
Sustainability Victoria and the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) have not effectively fulfilled their roles in managing municipal solid waste and implementing TZW. 
While Victoria met four out of six mid-term TZW targets, this performance is a result of contributions made by the industrial solid waste sector and littering behaviour. Progress related to the municipal solid waste sector, a significant source of organic waste, and therefore greenhouse gases, has been slow.
Significantly, waste generation continues to rise above expectations and little improvement in reducing this rate of increase is envisaged over the remainder of TZW’s life, putting at risk the achievement of its outcomes. The reasons for underachievement in relation to municipal solid waste encompass a lack of effective planning, leadership, coordination, and oversight. This has had consequences for the effective implementation of TZW, and highlights how important effective application of these core principles and practices are to achieving good program outcomes.
Sustainability Victoria has missed an opportunity to thoroughly review TZW and modify it to improve its effectiveness. It has also missed an opportunity to review its own practices in light of its lead role and the level of underperformance. This has diminished the prospect of TZW outcomes being achieved by 2014 in relation to municipal solid waste.
Findings
Waste management arrangements
Managing multiple stakeholders, to enable the achievement of outcomes, requires effective leadership, coordination, oversight and accountability. For TZW, implementation has been hampered by a lack of these principles and practices.
Sustainability Victoria has not adequately discharged its coordination and leadership responsibilities. This has been compounded by its failure to develop structured and effective processes to coordinate stakeholder involvement and effort. This has caused a range of inefficient and ineffective practices to develop across the municipal waste sector.
In an effort to improve leadership and coordination across the sector, in September 2010 Sustainability Victoria initiated quarterly portfolio meetings across the municipal waste sector, with monthly meetings for issues requiring immediate attention. While this is a good initiative, it excludes municipal councils and regional waste management groups and, without full representation from the whole sector, its effectiveness is likely to be limited.
DSE has not been effective in discharging its oversight and accountability role in relation to municipal waste management. It has had limited involvement in the sector, which has allowed poor leadership, coordination and implementation of TZW, by Sustainability Victoria, to continue since 2005.
Implementation planning
In addition to the need for leadership and coordination, effectively implementing a strategy such as TZW requires sound implementation planning. This should result in the development of a plan that aligns policy objectives with implementation.
Sustainability Victoria has not effectively planned the implementation of TZW. No implementation plan was developed and roles and responsibilities were not made clear. Consequently, there has been underachievement against TZW actions and priorities. For the past six years TZW has been operated without a coherent structure. In consequence, there are disparate approaches to addressing common issues and shared responsibilities across agencies, regions and municipal boundaries.
Lack of clarity has led to confusion by agencies about their responsibilities, poor planning for individual actions, and a lack of coordination of resources across government. This lack of clarity has also resulted in delays in implementation and progressing of actions—something that Sustainability Victoria recognised in its October 2010 mid-term review.
Only in 2011 did Sustainability Victoria commence development of an implementation plan, and consultation to date has been limited. Notably important stakeholders, such as the regional waste management groups and municipal councils, have not been engaged.
Assessing Towards Zero Waste
Effective implementation requires ongoing monitoring and evaluation. This enables implementers to track progress against expectations, as well as assess the impact actions are having on outcome achievement.
Sustainability Victoria does not have a clear understanding of the status of TZW actions, nor does it know whether the contributing actions have been effective, or been implemented efficiently or economically. It also does not routinely monitor progress of implementation. The status of progress against the contributing actions is unclear, despite around 70 per cent of TZW’s time frame already having passed. 
Sustainability Victoria has not reviewed the effectiveness of actions in contributing to the achievement of targets or TZW outcomes. This is because progress monitoring and evaluation were not adequately considered during implementation planning. Consequently, Sustainability Victoria does not know what impact TZW actions are having on municipal solid waste outcomes.
Towards Zero Waste targets
Establishing performance measures or targets that are practicable is an important first step. If they are not based on sound assumptions, then their achievability is put at risk. There are six targets in TZW, four of which relate to municipal solid waste.
TZW targets apply only at a statewide level. Targets and performance measures that are consistent with and inform TZW progress have not been developed at the regional and local level. Consequently, there are no clear indicators to determine whether metropolitan and regional areas are performing in line with expectations.
Performance against targets
To effectively report on achievement against outcomes and performance against targets, underpinning data needs to be complete, timely and accurate. 
Victoria’s waste management arrangements lack a knowledge management system that clearly articulates the purpose of data collection, identifies the data that is required for decision making, and details procedures or guidance to address completeness, validity, consistency, timeliness and accuracy of information. 
Data quality deficiencies have reduced the reliability of performance data and projections of performance by 2014. The most recent assessment of performance against the TZW targets was released in 2008–09. Based on the available data, progress to date in relation to municipal solid waste is mixed, with little certainty that future performance will meet targets.
Recommendations
Number	Recommendation	Page	
1.	The Department of Sustainability and Environment should: 
·	clarify and confirm the roles, responsibilities and accountabilities of public sector entities involved in waste management and the implementation of the Towards Zero Waste Strategy
·	enhance the transparency and accountability of funding arrangements and align funding with current waste management priorities 
·	clarify the oversight and accountability arrangements for Sustainability Victoria in relation to the Towards Zero Waste Strategy.	19	
2.	Sustainability Victoria should:
·	assess the status and relevance of the Towards Zero Waste strategy actions
·	complete development of an implementation plan for the Towards Zero Waste Strategy in consultation with stakeholders
·	coordinate the completion of regional and local waste management plans, and periodically review them for adequacy 
·	establish a framework for progress monitoring, evaluation, and reporting, and assess the effectiveness of strategy actions, and their cost effectiveness in implementation.	19	
3.	Sustainability Victoria should:
·	meet the intended objectives of the mid-term review by completing outstanding analysis
·	coordinate the development of regional and local performance indicators to enable contributions to the statewide targets to be reliably measured
·	develop a knowledge management system to rationalise data, identify and rectify data quality issues and modelling accuracy.	29	

Submissions and comments received
In addition to progressive engagement during the course of the audit, in accordance with section 16(3) of the Audit Act 1994 a copy of this report was provided to the Department of Sustainability and Environment, Sustainability Victoria, the Environment Protection Authority, the Department of Treasury and Finance, the Metropolitan Waste Management Group, the Highlands Regional Waste Management Group, City of Ballarat, Banyule City Council, Glen Eira City Council and Hume City Council with a request for submissions or comments.
Agency views have been considered in reaching our audit conclusions and are represented to the extent relevant and warranted in preparing this report. Their full section 16(3) submissions and comments however, are included in Appendix A.