NSW Government: Stop Burdening the Bush

Greater Sydney is running out of landfill space. Instead of tackling this decades‑old problem where it begins, the NSW Government has chosen to shift the burden onto rural communities by building Energy from Waste facilities hundreds of kilometres away.

Originally, several of these facilities were planned for industrial areas in Sydney. Yet every one of those proposals was shelved after public health concerns were raised. In 2022, the Government went further, introducing a planning policy to ban most EfW developments in Greater Sydney altogether.

Now, their “solution” is to push these facilities into regional precincts — Parkes, Richmond Valley, Southern Goulburn Mulwaree, and West Lithgow. They claim such sites will guarantee environmental and human health protections. But if those protections are truly robust, why can’t these facilities be built where the waste is actually produced — in Sydney itself?

This is not just a planning decision; it’s a question of fairness. Rural communities should not be forced to carry the risks and consequences of Sydney’s waste problem. If the Government is serious about environmental responsibility and public health, it must confront the issue where it starts — in Greater Sydney — instead of exporting the problem to regional NSW.