Michael Nicholls

🗣️ “Landfill operators have an obligation to the community to ensure their operations are run to the highest environmental standards.”

Stephen Beaman, NSW EPA Executive Director of Operations, made the regulator’s position clear on 3 April 2026.

📅 If your business sits in Group 2 or Group 3, the preparation window for mandatory climate disclosures is narrowing fast. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has released the first tranche of official e-learning modules for mandatory sustainability reporting.

⚠️ PFAS litigation is following the legal trajectory of asbestos. In the United States alone, over 15,000 active lawsuits are now consolidated in federal courts, and the financial exposure is moving aggressively down the supply chain.

🗺️ You now have to travel up to five kilometres away from any known source just to find a true environmental baseline. The NSW EPA has officially rolled out the state’s first dedicated statewide PFAS ambient monitoring programme.

🏛️ Environmental penalties are no longer quietly disappearing into consolidated government revenue. EPA Victoria is directing a $1 million penalty from Veolia Recycling & Recovery into a dedicated Restorative Project Account.

💧 Microplastics and pharmaceuticals have officially entered the US EPA priority regulatory watch list for the first time. The draft Sixth Contaminant Candidate List (CCL 6) for drinking water now includes these two emerging contaminant groups.

🛑 Calling an operational change a “temporary trial” will not protect your facility from regulatory enforcement. The South Australian Environment Protection Authority has ordered a major fertiliser producer to immediately halt an unapproved pilot programme.

☀️ 250,000 end-of-life solar panels are about to become the foundational test case for managing Australia’s impending e-waste crisis. The Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) has released a $24.7 million tender to establish a National Solar Panel Recycling Pilot.