Australian councils mapped for circular economy readiness in new 520-council index

A new study of 520 local governments across six Australian states has found that while basic waste services are nearly universal, the deeper conditions needed for a genuine circular economy remain unevenly distributed. Researchers developed a Circular Economy Readiness Index (CERI) to assess whether councils demonstrate the service, infrastructure, governance, engagement, and circularity conditions required to move beyond conventional waste management, and the results reveal a national landscape split into four distinct readiness profiles.

The study, published in Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, applied systematic content analysis to publicly available council information, including waste service pages, strategies, education resources, and circular economy project descriptions. Each council was coded on a binary basis: a score of 1 was assigned where a council website or linked public document provided clear evidence of an indicator, and a 0 where no sufficiently clear public evidence was identified. Importantly, a zero code indicated the absence of documented evidence rather than confirmation that a service or activity did not exist.

The indicators were organised into five dimensions weighted to a maximum index score of 100. Service foundation, covering general waste, food organics and garden organics (FOGO), mixed recycling, and separate glass collection, was weighted at 25 points. Infrastructure access, covering landfill and recycling or transfer station pathways, was weighted at 15 points. Governance maturity, public engagement, and circularity depth were each weighted at 20 points. The authors stress that the index measures publicly observable readiness conditions, not direct evidence of circularity performance such as tonnes recovered, emissions avoided, or contamination reduction.

The national picture shows a strong basic waste-service foundation but a much weaker circular one. Of the 520 councils examined, 478 councils, or 91.9 percent, provided evidence of general waste bin services, and 405 councils, or 77.9 percent, provided mixed recycling services. Yet only 246 councils, or 47.3 percent, provided FOGO services, and separate glass collection remained rare, with just 14 councils, or 2.7 percent, offering a dedicated glass bin stream, all of them in Victoria. Meanwhile, 393 councils, or 76.0 percent, reported landfill disposal pathways, while 334 councils, or 64.0 percent, reported recycling or transfer station practices.

Readiness varied substantially across states. Victoria recorded the highest mean CERI score at 52.2, followed by New South Wales at 44.2, South Australia at 42.4, Tasmania at 42.0, Queensland at 29.9, and Western Australia at 23.1. Victoria’s stronger position reflected near-universal general waste and recycling services, relatively high FOGO availability, the only observed separate glass stream, and the highest share of councils with circular economy project evidence. Western Australia recorded the lowest average readiness because many councils had limited publicly visible evidence of FOGO, mixed recycling, waste projects, public engagement, and higher-order circular initiatives.

Statistical testing confirmed that these differences were not random. A Kruskal–Wallis test found significant variation in CERI scores across states, H(5) = 163.56, p < 0.001. Chi-square tests also confirmed significant associations between state and indicator availability: FOGO provision varied strongly by state, χ2(5) = 141.45, p < 0.001; mixed recycling provision varied significantly, χ2(5) = 90.25, p < 0.001; and separate glass provision was highly concentrated in Victoria, χ2(5) = 80.31, p < 0.001. Waste management project evidence, χ2(5) = 18.71, p = 0.002, and circular economy project evidence, χ2(5) = 15.77, p = 0.008, also differed significantly by state, though more moderately.

Cluster analysis then identified four readiness profiles. The largest group, the foundational service-limited cluster, comprised 223 councils with a mean CERI score of 19.3, showing limited public evidence of governance, engagement, and circularity-depth activities. The second group, recycling and organics-transition councils, included 162 councils with a mean score of 42.0, reflecting moderate service coverage including some organics transition but weaker governance and engagement evidence. The third group, strategy-led councils, included 44 councils with a mean score of 61.0, characterised by stronger formal planning and project commitment. The fourth group, community-engaged circularity councils, included 91 councils with a mean score of 61.6, showing stronger evidence of education, digital engagement, reuse, repair, composting, resource exchange, product stewardship, and other higher-order circular activities.

The authors argue that these clusters demonstrate Australian councils are not progressing through a single uniform circular economy pathway. Instead, they occupy different readiness positions shaped by service maturity, infrastructure access, governance capacity, public engagement, and circularity depth. This distinction matters because a council may provide general waste and mixed recycling services while lacking organics recovery, source-separated glass collection, reuse systems, repair initiatives, circular procurement, or community engagement programmes. Conversely, a council with strong public education, product stewardship participation, reuse infrastructure, and FOGO processing pathways may be more capable of supporting circular transition even if it remains dependent on regional infrastructure and state policy.

The study also highlights why waste management activity and circular economy readiness should not be treated as interchangeable. General waste services represent the persistence of the linear disposal system, and mixed recycling represents a basic recovery pathway that does not necessarily indicate high-quality circularity, because material recovery depends on contamination, processing capacity, and market demand. FOGO is more closely aligned with circularity because it can divert organic material from landfill and support compost or soil amendment pathways, but its presence alone does not demonstrate a full circular system unless councils also provide contamination management, processing pathways, household education, and market demand for recovered organics. Separate glass collection can improve material quality, but its circular value depends on collection economics, processing access, transport distances, and end-market demand.

The findings carry direct policy implications. The authors conclude that a one-size-fits-all policy approach is unlikely to be effective, and that national and state governments should avoid assuming all councils can implement circular economy reforms from the same starting point. Low-readiness councils should not be interpreted simply as lacking ambition; many operate under structural constraints including smaller material volumes, longer transport distances, limited processing access, weaker market demand, and reduced staffing capacity. The study, which was designed as a census of the councils in the dataset rather than a sample-based assessment, acknowledges limitations including reliance on publicly available information, binary coding that simplifies complex service differences, a normative weighting structure, and the absence of formal inter-rater reliability statistics for the full dataset. The authors recommend differentiated support through targeted funding, regional infrastructure planning, public engagement support, circular procurement, inter-council collaboration, improved data systems, and community-based sustainability education, warning that without such support, circular economy progress is likely to remain spatially uneven.

Subject of Research: Development and application of a Circular Economy Readiness Index to assess waste services, governance, engagement, and circularity conditions across 520 Australian local governments

Article Title: Circular economy readiness in Australian local governments: a multi-criteria assessment of waste services, governance capacity, and transition pathways

Article References: Don, K., Chakraborty, A., Harrison, T., & Sandhu, H. (2026). Circular economy readiness in Australian local governments: a multi-criteria assessment of waste services, governance capacity, and transition pathways. Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy, 28(11), Article 286. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-026-03630-5

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10098-026-03630-5

Keywords: circular economy, local government, waste management, recycling, FOGO, Australia, readiness index, governance, sustainability, cluster analysis, public engagement, state variation