Environment ministers will meet tomorrow to discuss a growing waste crisis.

Australia will no longer be able to ship 619,000 tonnes of recyclable material to China, with the nation no longer accepting it.

New South Wales and Victorian governments have given councils emergency funds to deal with the growing amount of waste but there are calls for a long-term national approach to waste management.

CEO of the Waste Management Association of Australia Gayle Sloan says we need to be able to handle the waste we create locally without relying on other nations.

“We believe we’ve got to create more market and more demand for recycled content in Australia,” she tells Ben Fordham.

“We can deal with some of it but we need to deal with all of it.

“We should not be making single plastic bottles to go into the recycling stream that cannot be reused.”

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