Central Desert Regional Council, NT
Population: 3,591
Regional overview
The Central Desert Regional Council area is a vast arid region north of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, covering 283,000,000 hectares across the Tanami Desert. The Traditional Owners of the land are the Anmatjere, Eastern Arrernte and Warlpiri people and two-thirds of the region’s inhabitants are First Nations people. This rugged landscape is home to nine communities and most of the area is Aboriginal freehold land.
Vast geographic distances, high transport costs and limited access to markets mean that accessing the opportunities of the circular economy is challenging for remote communities. The Central Desert Regional Council works with Local Authorities, the Central Land Council and a range of partners to deliver services across the region.
The council has recently developed a Waste Management Strategy to address the needs of communities. The strategy aims to provide sustainable, equally accessible waste management services aligned with the Waste Management Hierarchy and circular economy principles. One focus of the strategy is to more accurately categorise waste collected from communities by upgrading recycling bays. This is essential for understanding the volume and types of waste collected to improve landfill management and inform the development of new solutions. Community engagement and education is prioritised as a means of empowering communities to participate more in waste and resource recycling. Through the strategy, the council will coordinate education campaigns at schools and Local Authorities and introduce a two-bin system of red and yellow bins in remote communities to separate recyclables from general waste.
Drivers of circular economy
Legacy waste is a significant issue in the Central Desert and other remote communities. High transport costs and limited local infrastructure mean that waste accumulates over many years, surpassing the capacity of landfill. The need to address increasing volumes of waste is a primary driver of circular economy in the Central Desert.
While Section 19 Land Use Agreement of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act requires local governments to restore land that has been damaged by the accumulation of legacy waste, remote councils do not generate significant revenues from waste disposal due to a low rate-paying base. Hence, remediation has become an increasingly unbearable cost for many councils. Additionally, the council envisages a future with more pronounced circular economic approaches to reverse the situation of overwhelmed landfills and attain longer term sustainability. Accordingly, the council is looking at opportunities to generate some revenue and invest it back to the communities, as well as develop the employment and skill base.
Federal and Northern Territory Government policies promoting circular economy principles have empowered local councils to adopt circular economy initiatives. These policies, alongside available grants and funding opportunities have created new possibilities for tackling waste management in remote areas.
Benefits and challenges
Improved waste management and recycling boost community amenity, appearance, health and wellbeing. There are also economic opportunities connected to revenue generation through reuse and/or recycling of waste materials. Also, circular economy initiatives can build capacity within communities by training and employing residents and reduce building and construction costs through recirculation of locally recycled materials.
The biggest barriers for the Central Desert are geographic distance and economies of scale. As a remote area in Northern Territory, Central Desert does not have much access to the recyclables market and the 12 waste management facilities within the region are separated from each other by sometimes thousands of kilometres. Transporting recycled materials to central facilities or markets is not only logistically challenging but also economically unviable due to high freight costs. As most communities are very small, the challenges of low economies of scale mean that recycling and waste management operations are not cost-effective.
The absence of local markets for recycled materials means that even if recycling initiatives are successful in collecting and processing materials, finding buyers or uses for these materials within the region can be difficult. Dependence on external companies, such as scrap metal dealers for the recycling of materials like car bodies, requires ensuring that these activities are economically viable for all parties involved.
Another challenge is the significant need for investment in infrastructure to facilitate waste sorting and recycling processes. Funding these infrastructure improvements is challenging because of limited financial resources due to a narrow rate base. While Australian and Northern Territory Government policies support circular economy principles, the grants and funding available often come with conditions that may not align with the specific needs of remote and regional areas. This can limit the ability of local councils to access the funds necessary for implementing circular economy initiatives.
Finally, as local governments do not have authority over water and energy supply, which is within the jurisdiction of territory agencies, broader circular economy initiatives such as water recycling or renewable energy are difficult to initiate at a local level.
Collaboration
Collaboration is key to progressing circular economy in the Central Desert region. The region is home to a number of collaborative partnerships including a first-of-its-kind study led by Charles Darwin University in partnership with Central Desert Regional Council and Traditional Owners to analyse legacy waste in the region and identify options to manage this waste in ways that support the circular economy.
Collaborative efforts are also underway to identify economic opportunities in the diversion and recycling of different types of waste. For example, through a Federation Funding Agreement with the Northern Territory Government, the Australian Government has committed $4 billion over 10 years to improve housing in remote communities. Part of this package involves rebuilding and refurbishing houses in remote communities, which creates significant amounts of construction and demolition waste. The council works with industry partners to recycle concrete waste into recycled concrete aggregate. Another initiative recycles discarded car bodies by engaging metal recyclers and scrap metal dealers.
In addition, Central Desert Regional Council partners with neighbouring councils to access economies of scale where small volumes of some waste streams mean that it may not be worthwhile for the region to conduct some projects by itself. For areas with a small population or economy, collaborative actions are an important solution to implement circular economy and other initiatives.
The Central Desert region consists of nine remote First Nations communities. Communities are actively engaged in land management as Traditional Owners and in local government activities through Local Authorities. The council delivers municipal services to communities and leads engagement and education around waste management. The council hosts community meetings to encourage residents to participate in waste management and recycling and to build consensus around things they want to achieve together. Council staff interviewed reported strong relationships with Traditional Owners and collaborative relationships through presentations, discussions and consultation on circular economy and waste management.