Tens of thousands of tonnes of hazardous waste are being dumped in urban rubbish tips around Australia each year, posing a threat to people's health and the environment.

The toxic materials are being thrown into household garbage bins and ending up in landfill sites not designed to take hazardous waste.

The warning was issued on 25 June 2007 at the Contamination 07 conference in Adelaide by Australian waste-to-resources company, Global Renewables.

"On OECD figures, each Australian produces around 690 kilos of municipal solid waste per year - making us the second most wasteful country on earth," Global Renewables spokesman Casey Cahill says.

"This rubbish mostly goes to landfills, which on its own is a loss of re-usable resources, and unfortunately the garbage also contains significant amounts of contaminants - our research shows contaminants make up around 3 per cent of the municipal waste stream, with each Australian producing an average of 20 kilograms of hazardous waste a year."

The hazardous items present in household waste collections include lead acid car batteries, mobile phones, TVs and computers that contain toxic heavy metals, pesticide, paint and household chemicals, gas cylinders, clinical waste from health services and asbestos.

"People assume that when you put something toxic in a dump it stays there. Unfortunately that isn't always the case - it can escape into the air or groundwater, while the tip itself will remain a contaminated site for decades."

Mr Cahill says Australians need to be educated about the dangers of placing hazardous materials in household garbage collection services, while advanced waste treatment facilities can also be used as a gatekeeper to help reduce the amount of toxic or hazardous materials going to landfill sites.

"We need to place a buffer between the household bin and the council burial ground. Advanced waste treatment technology provides that opportunity," he said.

 "Our company, Global Renewables, takes the view that waste is a resource that can be sorted and much of it usefully recycled. Our experience is that around 70 per cent of the contents of the average household garbage bin can be recycled or used for beneficial purposes such as renewable energy or organic soil conditioners."

Global Renewables operates a $100m advanced waste treatment facility at Eastern Creek in Sydney, using mechanical and biological methods to recover useful resources like plastic, glass, paper and metal, turn food and garden waste into high quality compost, and generate green energy from bio-gas.

The company's UR-3R Process® will also be used to treat the household waste of 1.4 million people in Lancashire.

"At Eastern Creek our pre-sort system is currently removing around 60 to 80 lead acid car batteries a day, which provides a snapshot of the hazardous pollution that is entering the municipal solid waste stream ," Mr Cahill says.

Used lead acid batteries contain lead compounds that are highly toxic for humans, animals and plants.

"This reinforces Global Renewables' view that all municipal solid waste should be pre-sorted before landfilling to remove hazardous materials and limit the potential for them to infiltrate the soil, water and air."

Mr Cahill says the presence of hazardous and toxic materials is just another reason why Governments should be taking steps to drastically reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfill in Australia.

"With all the debate on climate change, we should not forget that a tonne of waste dumped in a tip today will still be emitting greenhouse gases 50 years from now," he said.

It is estimated that improved resource recovery and waste management practices could reduce Australia's net greenhouse gas emissions by 6.7 per cent.

"The practice of landfilling is unsustainable."