The chief executive of the Australian Council of Recycling said the Australian recycling industry is in trouble and at present there is not a solution due to China’s limits on contamination levels. 

Since 2013, China has implemented inspections to curb rising levels of contamination and rejecting those that did not meet relevant standards. And in 2017, China announced that any imports of recyclables must have a contamination level below 0.5%. Many recyclers face challenges since they cannot process materials to meet the new contamination standards in China, which also further influences the commodity prices of recyclables. 

Moreover, as Australia has long been relied on the Chinese market for recyclables, it has few domestic outlets for these materials or unwanted goods. At present, the first thing that the Australia intends to do is maintain the trust and faith of householders and some city councils have appealed to householders to help lower the contamination rate in their yellow bins to meet the new high standards required by recycling company. However, the changed new conditions/requirements are forcing some small recycling companies to send recyclables to landfill and pay resulting fees. Some councils have adjusted recycling to the changes conditions but they have to pay a lot more for processing recyclables. 

The Environment Protection Agency Victoria is actively managing the impact of the challenges posed to regulations around stockpiling by the recycling crisis. Apart from enforcement of existing regulations, it has created a task force to audit recycling facilities and identify risky stockpiling. Some companies and councils are looking to market other than China to outsource the processing the recyclables, e.g. Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Korea. Some of them will ship the processed recyclables to China, but it causes additional costs. A meeting of federal and state environment ministers in April agreed that all Australian packaging should be compostable or recyclable by 2025 . Several state governments have provided shod-term support for the recycling industry and local councils but they also work towards longer-term solutions.