Sustainability Victoria will cease to exist on 30 June 2026. After nearly two decades as Victoria’s peak body for recycling and waste reduction, it is being wound up following the Silver Review, with functions transferring to the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) and a new entity called Recycling Victoria.
For Victorian businesses managing IT equipment, this raises a practical question: does anything change?
The short answer is no. But that does not mean you can ignore the transition.
What is changing
From 1 July 2026, oversight of Victoria’s waste and resource recovery programs shifts to DEECA. The Statewide Waste and Resource Recovery Infrastructure Plan will be replaced by the Victorian Recycling Infrastructure Plan, currently being developed by Recycling Victoria. Grant programs run by Sustainability Victoria, including the Circular Economy Recycling Modernisation Fund, are closing out their final rounds right now.
What is not changing: the Victorian e-waste landfill ban, which came into force on 1 July 2019, remains fully in effect. Businesses cannot lawfully dispose of computers, monitors, printers, phones, or any Category 2 material in general waste streams. That obligation is embedded in the Environment Protection Act. It will outlast the agency that helped design it.
Why compliance still requires a documented process
The landfill ban is the floor, not the ceiling. Improper disposal creates liability on multiple fronts.
End-of-life hardware that has not been properly sanitised carries data risk. The Australian Privacy Act, with penalties now reaching up to $50 million for serious breaches, requires organisations to take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify personal information when it is no longer needed. Retired laptops and decommissioned servers are not exempt from that obligation.
NIST 800-88 Rev. 2 is the accepted standard for media sanitisation. It defines three methods: clear, purge, and destroy. Which method applies depends on the sensitivity of the data and the type of media. Without a process aligned to this standard, organisations cannot demonstrate they have met their Privacy Act obligations under a regulatory audit.
On the environmental side, AS/NZS 5377 is the Australian standard for the collection and processing of end-of-life electrical and electronic equipment. A compliant ITAD partner operates under this standard regardless of which government agency is currently responsible for recycling oversight. ISO 14001 and ISO 27001 alignment give you additional documented layers of environmental management and information security governance.
The institutional transition creates a documentation gap risk
When agencies change, audit trails can get complicated. Grant acquittals, compliance reporting, and infrastructure planning that previously flowed through Sustainability Victoria will need to find a new home at DEECA. For businesses in the middle of a hardware refresh cycle, this is the wrong time to have gaps in your own chain of custody records.
Electronic Waste Victoria’s CircularTrack platform records each asset through every stage of disposition: collection, data destruction, and downstream materials processing. Every transaction generates a certificate. CO2e reporting from hardware diversion is captured and available for ESG disclosure. That documentation exists independently of which government body is administering Victoria’s waste framework at any given moment.
What to do before 30 June
If your organisation has a hardware refresh scheduled for the second half of 2026, confirm the process now. Waiting for the dust to settle on the Sustainability Victoria transition is not a compliance strategy. The e-waste landfill ban applies on 1 July the same as any other day. Your Privacy Act obligations apply the same as any other day.
Book a collection with EWV, receive a fully documented chain of custody, and close out your end-of-life IT obligations before the transition adds administrative noise.
Contact EWV today to schedule your next IT asset collection. Every device is tracked, every drive is sanitised to NIST 800-88 Rev. 2, and every certificate is yours to keep.