Even basic recycling of things like plastics is not done well.

Government using contractors as part of the system is fine, but not having a system at all seems to be the problem. Government should at the very least be setting up effective frameworks for management, recycling and disposal of all types of waste. Instead they set up a few guidelines and leave it to “market forces” and wonder why we end up with dodgy systems geared towards profit for company owners at the expense of the health and safety of the general public and the workers involved in the industry.

In the past decade or so in Victoria alone there have been: warehouses full of soft plastic being stockpiled, warehouses full of contaminated “mixed recycling” being stockpiled, warehouses full of toxic chemicals stockpiled and being stored incorrectly, a massive property being used as an illegal dump for huge volumes of toxic waste being secretly buried, an old landfill site leaking dangerous levels of methane into houses in a nearby housing estate

These are just the ones that were big enough to be in the media that I can remember off the top of my head. This is what “market forces” and weak regulations get us