The instrument is the Recycling and Waste Reduction (Export - Waste Paper and Cardboard) Rules 2024, made under the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020. If you export mixed or unsorted waste paper and cardboard, you need a licence, and since 1 July 2026 the licence carries a weight limit on what else is in the bale.

The cap appears three times, and they do different jobs

It would be easy to read this as a single threshold. It is not. The 5 per cent figure is written into three separate operations of the licensing scheme.

To get a licence, section 8 requires an application covering export on or after 1 July 2026 to include information demonstrating that the applicant is, and is likely to continue to be, able to ensure that the total weight of contaminants in each consignment of regulated waste paper and cardboard exported on or after 1 July 2026 under the licence does not exceed 5% of the total weight of the consignment. Note the tense: not that you can hit it once, but that you are likely to continue to.

In deciding whether to grant one, section 9 makes the same capability a matter the decision-maker must have regard to: whether the applicant has the capacity to ensure that the total weight of contaminants in each consignment stays under the limit.

And once you hold it, section 10 makes it a standing condition. The holder must, for each consignment of regulated waste paper and cardboard exported on or after 1 July 2026 under the licence, ensure that the total weight of contaminants in the consignment does not exceed 5% of the total weight of the consignment.

So it functions as an entry test, a discretionary consideration, and a continuing obligation on every single load. A business that treats it as a number to hit at audit time has misread which of the three it is standing in.

What counts as a contaminant, and the exclusion that matters commercially

The Rules define it. Contaminants means material that represent a hazard to health, safety and the environment or non-paper components such as metals, plastics, glass, textiles or wood, and then the exclusion: but does not include water.

That last clause is not a technicality. Baled recovered paper carries moisture, and moisture is heavy. A 5 per cent limit measured on total consignment weight would behave very differently if water counted toward it. It does not, which means the cap is a test of sorting rather than of drying.

The other half of the definition is worth reading slowly too. Metals, plastics, glass, textiles and wood are named, and they are the things that survive a commingled kerbside stream. This is a rule about how well the material was separated, and separation happens upstream of the exporter.

Clearing 5 per cent is not the same as being compliant

This is the part most likely to catch someone out, and it comes from the department rather than the Rules. A consignment can sit inside the Australian limit and still require a permit under the Hazardous Waste (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act 1989, which gives effect to the Basel Convention. The department states a permit is required if the load does not meet contamination thresholds in the importing or transit countries, even if it meets the 5% limit under the RaWR Act, if it is mixed with other wastes, or if it contains Convention Annex I contaminants regardless of the amount.

Two Acts, two thresholds, and the foreign one can bite while you are comfortably inside the Australian one. The practical consequence is that the destination matters as much as the bale, and that is a commercial question before it is a compliance one.

What is not regulated

The scheme is aimed at mixed or unsorted material, exported under AHECC code 47079000. The department lists what falls outside it: pulp, a single or non-mixed grade of paper and cardboard, sorted liquid paperboard, material exported solely for personal or domestic use, and material imported temporarily and re-exported unchanged. Sorting your way out of the category is a real option, and it is the same work the cap is testing.

Our view, labelled as such

A 5 per cent cap on non-paper content is not a dramatic number to anyone already selling into markets that impose their own limits, and the practical effect of this rule may be modest for exporters who sorted properly anyway. What is worth noticing is the shape: the obligation was placed on the licence rather than on the shipment, which means the regulator’s lever is your licence and not just the bale in front of it. That is a stronger instrument than a border check, and it is aimed at capability rather than at incidents.

We would also note the timing without drawing a conclusion from it. The same day this cap commenced, 1 July 2026, the National Environmental Protection Agency was established, and the department’s waste-export pages say they are transitioning to nationalepa.gov.au in the coming weeks. Who administers this scheme a year from now is a reasonable thing for a licence holder to want to know.

How we sourced this

The three quoted obligations and the definition of contaminants come from the text of the Recycling and Waste Reduction (Export - Waste Paper and Cardboard) Rules 2024 as compiled for 1 July 2026, which we read from the Federal Register of Legislation rather than from any summary. The Hazardous Waste Act overlay, the AHECC code and the list of unregulated material come from the department’s own guidance page, and we attribute them to it rather than to the Rules, because the Rules do not contain them. The instrument uses the word “contaminants”; the guidance uses “contamination”. We follow whichever source we are quoting.

What we have not done. We have not read the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020 itself, so where the Rules cite section 34 of the Act we describe the Rules’ effect and not the Act’s. We have not obtained the number of current licence holders, any compliance or enforcement activity under the new cap, or any departmental guidance on how the 5 per cent is to be measured or sampled, which is the obvious practical question and one we could not answer from these documents. We have not sought comment from the department or from any exporter, and we name no company. The department’s page carries a “last updated” date of 9 December 2025 while describing changes that commenced on 1 July 2026, so we date it by the day we read it.

Sources

  1. Federal Register of Legislation, Recycling and Waste Reduction (Export - Waste Paper and Cardboard) Rules 2024 (F2024L00491, read 5 August 2026): the section 8 application requirement, the section 9 matter the decision-maker must consider, the section 10 licence condition, and the definition of contaminants including the exclusion of water. We quote the compilation in force from 1 July 2026, which is the version the cap commenced under, rather than whatever the register currently serves as latest.
  2. Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Exports of waste paper and cardboard (read 5 August 2026): that a licence is required and consignments are declared in the WELD portal and the Australian Border Force Integrated Cargo System, the AHECC code 47079000, the categories of paper and cardboard not regulated, the Hazardous Waste Act and Basel Convention overlay including that a permit is required even where the 5 per cent limit is met, and the establishment of the National Environmental Protection Agency on 1 July 2026.

Export recovered paper, or read these rules differently? Tell us and we will check it against the instrument and log the outcome here.