Orange City Council will consider a strategy on Tuesday night, which will consider regional recycling hubs, with a hope to develop niche capabilities and markets for recycled materials.

Access to freight transport, existing infrastructure and experience and the level of support from surrounding council areas would determine where facilities would be located.

Cowra, Mudgee and Gilgandra council areas already have processing facilities. 

The strategy is set to apply to all 13 NetWaste councils during the next five years to take advantage of state government funding announced in response to the China Sword policy.

READ MORE: Council urges residents to keep recycling in wake of China decision

Causing particular concerns for the councils are low-value recyclables. 

The state government’s container deposit scheme has taken out many of the higher-value plastics, as well as aluminium cans, which are worth $1400 a tonne. 

According to JR Richards and Sons, the price of cardboard has fallen from $240 a tonne to $100, dropping as low as $70 in some markets. 

Glass has become a particular problem because the cost of recycling is more expensive than imported new products and testing procedures on crushed glass for engineering use are also costly. 

The report said freight costs to Sydney were expensive compared to the value of the recyclables, meaning councils should look at processing low-value recyclables locally.

READ ALSO: Kidd says ratepayers shouldn’t have to foot bill for recycling

It said contamination levels were generally lower than metropolitan areas, but councils should still educate their communities on keeping rates down.

Orange mayor Reg Kidd said the challenge was statewide and the state and federal governments needed to get involved in a “big, big way”.

He believed converting waste to energy was one way forward.

“That’s one thing they do a fair bit of in Japan and we would have to have the right quantities to do it,” he said. 

“We also need to be pushing the technology and research on things like glass in road building – there’s hardly anything in Australia, but they do it in parts of Europe.”

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