Australia is one of the most taxed countries in the world. Now millions of households could be slugged with a – Daily Mail

Aussies could be slugged with a world-first ‘recycling tax’ in a further blow to households already struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.

The Albanese government has proposed several changes be made to exporting paper and cardboard waste from Australia from July 1.

Under the proposed scheme, exporters will need to pay $30,000 for a licence and a fee of $4 on every tonne that is sent overseas.

The National Waste and ­Recycling Industry Council (NWRIC) warned tens of millions of dollars would have to be passed onto Australians to cover the increased costs. 

The recycling body has called on environment minister Tanya Plibersek to dump the proposed changes. 

In 2022, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) revealed Australia had the fourth highest income tax in the world.

The average Aussies was taxed 23.2 per cent of their wages – a figure that is well above the average of 14.9 per cent across all 38 OECD nations. 

Paper and cardboard makes up 48 per cent of the recyclable waste Aussies put into their yellow bins. 

NWRIC chief executive Rick Ralph sent a letter to the government’s Expenditure Review Committee (ERC) – including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – on January 22.

Mr Ralph told Daily Mail Australia the new industry costs would automatically be passed on to households ‘via their council rates’.

‘The more Australian households recycle the more we must export the more we have to pay government,’ he said.

‘The fees apply to all recycled tyres, plastics , glass, paper, and cardboard we either export or locally landfill due to limited Australian markets for the volumes we recover.’

Mr Ralph told The Australian the proposed changes would make the cost-of-living crisis worse.

‘[It] will leave all ratepayers with a world-first yellow bin ‘recycling tax’ if this goes ahead,’ he said. 

‘A recycling tax is yet another increase to the cost of living and another breach of trust to the Australian community.’

Visy and Opal are the only Australian companies who buy paper and cardboard recyclables.

This means each year there is a surplus of about 1.2 million tonnes – about half of the total – that needs to be exported for recycling. 

The industry has said the new fee had been proposed without a regulatory impact statement by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. 

Mr Ralph said there was no evidence that meeting the new proposed standard would be beneficial to Australians, and he warned waste exporters would need to outlay a lot of money.

Federal environment minister Tanya Plibersek was fixing up the mess left by the previous government who left the country’s recycling capacity ‘inadequate’.

‘That’s why we are investing $1bn in recycling infrastructure to recycle an additional one million tonnes of waste every year. We’ll keep working with industry on a sensible pathway to implementation,’ she said.

Ms Plibersek said the new levy had been ‘coming for a long time’.

‘What the previous government said at that time is Australia should be dealing with Australian rubbish, and we should be doing more recycling in Australia,’ she said.

‘The problem was they didn’t set up any sort of system to achieve their objective which was to recycle Australian paper and cardboard.

‘So since coming to government, we have been building better recycling infrastructure.

‘We shouldn’t be exporting our rubbish overseas to be dealt with, wherever we can possible do it here. We should do it here.’

She said the levy ‘wasn’t in place yet’ and government was engaging with industry.’