Common landscaping products have been in the spotlight after the detection of asbestos in mulch across Sydney.
Friable asbestos was found in mulch at Harmony Park in Surry Hills this week, while bonded asbestos was found at Victoria and Belmore parks.
The growing crisis for the New South Wales government has prompted questions about the way the industry that produces mulch is being regulated as the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) investigates.
What are the regulations in NSW?
Suppliers of mulch in NSW must follow rules that are set out in the state’s mulch order.
The regulations require suppliers to ensure the mulch does not contain asbestos, engineered wood products, preservative-treated or coated wood residues, or a range of physical contaminants including glass, metal, rigid and flexible plastics and polystyrene.
The regulations also prohibit the supply of mulch that contains any weed, disease or pest to a consumer for use in an environmentally sensitive area.
How does the government ensure compliance?
There are no specific requirements that suppliers test mulch for contaminants. There are also no specific steps the supplier must take to ensure the mulch contains no asbestos.
A spokesperson for the EPA said the supplier can “choose how to ensure compliance with the order, for example via strict quality controls on the inputs or via sampling and testing the outputs”.
If the mulch is made from materials other than urban wood residues and sawmill and forestry residues, the supplier must also have a risk management plan for the mulch’s use on land.
Urban wood residues are untreated, unpainted and uncontaminated timber materials from the urban environment, while forestry and sawmill residues are untreated and uncontaminated plant materials from forestry operations.
Mulch covered by a risk assessment plan requires a visual assessment of the plant materials for any weeds, disease or pests.
Should the regulations change?
Sue Higginson, the NSW Greens environment spokesperson, wants to see changes to the way these products are regulated, including improvements to the way potentially contaminated materials are tracked through the supply chain.
“Anything less than a complete overhaul of how we track and trace harmful materials will result in more exposure and more harm,” she said.
She also wants the government to enact a temporary moratorium on the movement of mulch from mulch processors and for it to properly resource the EPA to inspect mulch suppliers and stop contaminated products from entering the supply chain.
“Some of the most harmful substances that are finding their way into mulch … can only be detected by chemical analysis and the government must urgently amend the regulations to reflect this,” Higginson said.
The opposition has called for the EPA to create a central register of all sites being investigated for possible asbestos contamination, including real-time updates as the investigation progresses.
“The first time people hear about a contaminated site shouldn’t be when the fences are going up or the media reports on it,” the opposition environment spokesperson, Kellie Sloane, said.
What might the government do next?
Earlier this week the premier, Chris Minns, said there were protocols in place to ensure mulch was safe, which was why the EPA had been handed so many resources to uncover what had gone wrong.
“It seems frustrating that inquiries are taking this long, but clearly when you’ve got so many sites … it’s going to take a period of time to identify … and reverse engineer to work out how you got here,” he said.
He said the government was considering bigger penalties for people caught doing the wrong thing and flagged the EPA was looking at a recall of mulch products.
The environment minister, Penny Sharpe, said the government would also look at stronger regulation.
“NSW has some of the strongest asbestos regulations in Australia,” she said.
“The current investigation shows there are challenges and the NSW government will consider both stronger regulation and higher penalties, to act as both a punishment and disincentive.”
Is mulch the only problem?
No. A Guardian Australia investigation revealed this month that the EPA has known for more than a decade that producers of soil fill made from construction and demolition waste were failing to comply with rules to limit the spread of contaminants such as lead and asbestos into the community.
The potentially contaminated product known as “recovered fines” is a soil or sand substitute made from the processing of construction and demolition waste, including skip bin residue, after all large recyclable material has been removed.
The soil fill can be applied to land for construction and landscaping purposes.
The regulator considered introducing tougher regulations for facilities producing recovered fines, warning in one document released to Guardian Australia that a business-as-usual approach would mean there was a risk that up to 658,000 tonnes of “non-compliant material” a year could be applied to “sensitive land” including residential sites, childcare facilities, schools and parks.
But it abandoned a proposal to tighten the regulations in 2022 after pushback from industry and negative media coverage.
