Australia has one of the highest taxes in the world.Millions of households could now be hit with the world’s first new ‘recycling tax’

Australia is set to impose the world’s first ‘recycling tax’, potentially dealing another blow to households already struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.

The Albanon Government has proposed several changes to the export of paper and cardboard waste from Australia from 1 July.

Under the proposed system, exporters would have to pay $30,000 in license fees and a $4 fee for each ton sent overseas.

The National Waste and Recycling Industry Council (NWRIC) has warned that tens of millions of dollars will need to be passed on to Australians to cover the increased costs.

Recycling groups have called on Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to scrap the proposed changes.

In 2022, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) revealed that Australia had the fourth highest income tax in the world.

The average Australian pays 23.2 per cent of their wages in tax, significantly higher than the 14.9 per cent average across 38 OECD countries.

48% of the recyclable waste Australians put in their yellow bins is paper and cardboard.

NWRIC chief executive Rick Ralph wrote to the government’s Expenditure Review Committee (ERC), which includes Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, on 22 January.

Mr Ralph told Daily Mail Australia the costs of the new industry would be automatically passed on to households “through council rates”.

“The more Australian households recycle, the more we have to export and the more we have to pay the government,” he said.

“This charge applies to all recycled tyres, plastics, glass, paper and cardboard that we export or landfill locally as there is a limited Australian market for the volumes we can collect.”

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

‘[It] “If implemented, this would impose the world’s first yellow box ‘recycling tax’ on all ratepayers,” he said.

“The recycling tax is yet another increase in the cost of living and another breach of trust in Australian society.”

Visy and Opal are the only Australian companies that purchase paper and cardboard recyclables.

This means that each year there is a surplus of approximately 1.2 million tonnes, or about half of the total, which must be exported for recycling.

The industry claims the new tariffs were proposed without a regulatory impact statement from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water.

Mr Ralph said there was no evidence that meeting the new proposed standards would be beneficial to Australians and warned waste exporters would have to spend significant amounts of money.

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was trying to clean up the mess left by the previous government, which left the country’s recycling capacity “inadequate”.

“That’s why we are investing $1 billion in recycling infrastructure and recycling an additional million tons of waste every year.” We will continue to work with industry on smart paths to implementation. ” she said.

Plibersek said the new tax has been “a long time in the making.”

“What the previous government said at the time was that Australia should deal with Australian rubbish and we should do more recycling in Australia,” she said.

“The problem is that we haven’t put any systems in place to achieve our objective of recycling Australia’s paper and cardboard.

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

“We shouldn’t export garbage overseas to be disposed of as much as possible domestically. We should do it here.”

She said the levy was “not yet introduced” and the government was working with industry.