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Targeting illegal waste disposal


2017-18 highlights

Targeting illegal waste disposal

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Illegal dumping has significant impacts on human health and the environment and costs Victorians around $30 million a year in cleanup and lost landfills levy revenue.

In response, EPA’s Illegal Waste Dumping Strikeforce tackles illegal waste disposal across the state through a range of targeted initiatives.

In 2017–18, our Strikeforce Program implemented a project to target the skip bin sector – specifically, operators who advertise to take away household waste and then avoid their legitimate waste disposal costs by dumping waste on public and private land. This behaviour causes significant cleanup costs for local councils and private landowners, as well as potentially making everyday citizens complicit in pollution.

A key component of the skip bins project was our animated media campaign,Waste in the right place, which ran during April and May 2018 to raise public awareness of illegal dumping by skip bin operators and encourage customers to ask where their waste is going.

EPA also partnered with Victoria Police and Hume City Council to conduct an inspection blitz targeting rogue skip bin operators. This blitz was a culmination of more than a year’s work by EPA’s Intelligence and Analysis team which identified 110 small to medium suspected rogue skip bin sites. EPA also worked with Brimbank City Council, Hume City Council and City of Whittlesea during intelligence gathering.

In May 2018, the Strikeforce Program received $9.1 million in funding over four years in the 2018–19 State Budget. This funding will enable us to continue preventing and investigating illegal dumping through targeted investigations and compliance activities at high-risk sites.

In 2018–19, we also look forward to further building our intelligence gathering and analysis capability by:

enhancing our capacity to monitor and analyse industry activity
improving data links across agencies to increase intelligence sharing and joint response
using data and intelligence to inform strategic planning and tactical decision-making.

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$9.1 million

in government funding for the Illegal Dumping Strikeforce Program

$30 million

spent on cleaning up illegal dumping in Victoria every year

110 sites

used by suspected small-to-medium rogue skip bin operators were identified during a blitz with Victoria Police and Hume City Council

300 sites

inspected as part of the Build Aware program

Page last updated on 31 Dec 2018