NEWS the shire is looking to extend the life of the Rye landfill site will avoid, albeit temporarily, the costly and environmentally questionable alternatives on offer.
The shire had begun preparing to shift to the expensive option of transporting all landfill waste to Dandenong after the anticipated closure of the Rye landfill site (“Big bill to find solution after Rye landfill closure”, The News, 20/08/26).
The ultimate aim was to again look at participating in the state government’s touted waste-to-energey scheme.
In 2021, the state government established Victoria’s waste-to-energy scheme with the Circular Economy (Waste Reduction and Recycling) Act, in 2023 introduced Regulations to manage the scheme.
A push followed for local governments to commit to waste-to-energy, but in 2022, Mornington Peninsula Shire refused to sign up to a pre-tender contract with South East Metropolitan Advanced Waste Processing (SEMAWP) Pty Ltd.
The contract committed the member councils to supply a “minimum tonnage” of waste for 25 years to a waste to energy plant at an “unconfirmed” location.
In a unanimous decision on 17 March 2022, Mornington Peninsula councillors deferred a decision, citing “substantial risks” to ratepayers.
Mayor at the time, Anthony Marsh, said signing up would have been “reckless”.
“As a regionally significant waste project, we expect the State Government to address the substantial risks to ratepayers and provide legislative certainty for the future of alternative waste.
“A commitment to the current procurement process would have exposed the Mornington Peninsula Shire and its ratepayers to unacceptable financial risk and would have been reckless.”
Waste-to-energy has bi-partisan support in the Victorian parliament, although both Greater Sydney (since 2022) and the ACT (since January 2026) have banned the practice.
Maria Remova, from Australian Conservation Foundation – Mornington Group told The News, “Waste to Energy” projects are often presented as a quick fix of the landfill problem and the source of the ‘renewable’ energy.”
“However, the facilities are neither green nor renewable: they relate to fossil fuel energy, burning mostly plastics and generate toxic ashes while producing very low net electricity output.
The shire set an ambitious target in 2020 to abolish the need for landfill by 2030. The strategy, Beyond Zero Waste, contained actions “to support a circular economy and meet the Shire’s annual greenhouse gas emission reductions target”.
While the shire looks set to march back the commitment to “zero landfill”, and buy time with an extension of the life of the Rye landfill site, long term its options are still poor.
Eventually the Rye landfill site will again reach capacity, and the only option will be transporting landfill to Dandenong, and signing up for the legislated waste-to-energy scheme that has questionable environmental outcomes and would create a cost burden for ratepayers for decades to come.
First published in the Mornington News 10 November 2026
