The Victorian Legislative Council’s recent inquiry into the development and expansion of waste-to-energy (WtE) infrastructure provides an important opportunity to consider how Victoria should manage plastics that cannot be practically recovered and recycled.

The Committee Report supports WtE as a lower-order waste-management option, while emphasising that it should not displace higher-order recovery such as reuse and recycling. Its recommendations call for Victoria to ensure that only genuine residual waste is directed to lower-order treatment options, with greater emphasis on waste avoidance, reuse and recycling.

For PVC, however, the distinction between technically recyclable and practically recoverable is important. Many PVC products have long service lives and occur in relatively small, geographically dispersed quantities at end of life. Products such as coated textiles, flooring, cables, profiles and some construction products can also be composite or contaminated, making separation and recovery difficult. In Australia, the commercial challenge is compounded by limited domestic markets and manufacturing capacity capable of consistently using some recovered PVC streams.

International experience demonstrates that WtE can form part of an integrated plastics management system where material recovery is not technically or economically viable.

Denmark is a particularly relevant example. The OECD reports that Denmark has been a leader in diverting waste from landfill through incineration with energy recovery, with WtE treating around half of municipal waste in 2017. Denmark's highly efficient facilities provide both electricity and district heating, and the country has progressively combined energy recovery with increased recycling.

A Danish Environmental Protection Agency assessment has specifically examined energy recovery from mixed plastics, including scenarios involving separation of plastic fractions for high-efficiency combined heat and power generation.

The OECD's Global Plastics Outlook provides the broader principle: modern WtE generally has a better environmental outcome than landfill, although recycling remains preferable where viable. It notes that state-of-the-art facilities can recover significant energy and that recovering heat for industrial or residential use can further improve efficiency.

For Victoria, the policy challenge should therefore not be framed as recycling versus WtE. The objective should be to maximise material recovery where it is technically, environmentally and economically justified, while recognising high-efficiency WtE as a legitimate alternative for genuinely unrecoverable residual plastics.

For PVC stewardship, this means recover PVC where practical, but do not confuse theoretical recyclability with economically or environmentally sustainable recovery. Where recovery is not viable, high-efficiency energy recovery can provide a preferable alternative to landfill while extracting useful energy from the residual material.