Visy paper recycling plant's odour problem in Reservoir

There are days Chris Wilkinson pulls into his Reservoir driveway and immediately shuts himself inside his house.

"I'll come home from work and I'll be like, 'I'll go for a quick walk' and then it smacks you in the face," Mr Wilkinson said.

"Even when you shut your doors and the windows and everything, it still manages to get into the house."

The Wilkinson family has lived opposite the Visy paper recycling plant since just before the COVID pandemic hit.

Mr Wilkinson said the odour emitted from the factory ranges from "a dry papery smell" to "like a bacteria, yoghurt, fermenting kind of a smell".

"During the lockdowns, it was unbelievable. It was 24/7," he said.

Company says there's 'no simple solution'

Reservoir resident Frieda, who did not want her surname used, lives further away from the mill than Mr Wilkinson.

But even at several hundred metres distance, she said the odour affected her breathing and caused her to cough on an almost daily basis.

"You can't go outside, I don't even want to let my dog breathe this," Frieda said.

"You cannot put your laundry outside and sometimes it's from early morning to early evening, like days in a row.

The odour from the paper mill is not a new issue.

The Reservoir facility was built in 1983 and it now turns more than 800,000 tonnes of material from residential kerbside recycling bins and commercial sources into recycled paper each year.

It is a water intensive process.

The heat and chemicals used in Visy's recycled water operation produce sulphides and volatile fatty acids which carry an odour when released into the air through the facility's ventilation stacks.

"While Visy has already undertaken substantial on-site work to reduce odour, there is still problem-solving work to do," the company says on its website.

"There is no single simple solution. It will take time to get the combination of odour management strategies right."

The ABC repeatedly sought comment from Visy but did not receive a response.

The company adopted an odour control program in December 2020, which included initiatives to reduce the amount of bacteria produced in its water system.

It has built higher ventilation stacks and increased the velocity of water vapour discharge to improve dispersion and reduce the intensity of the odour at ground level.

That work was completed in late October 2021, in consultation with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA).

But Mr Wilkinson and Freida said the stacks were still not high enough and there has only been marginal improvements.

"They're trying to fit new things onto a factory that's [decades] old," Mr Wilkinson said.

"It's basically band-aids. It's not a cure."

'Serious and comprehensive' look at zoning needed, says urban planner

Mr Wilkinson said he wanted Visy to move the recycling plant out of Reservoir, which he said was in "completely the wrong place".

"They can't fix the problem, they've admitted it themselves," he said.

"My house was built in the 1950s — the residents were there first."

Monash University professor of urban planning Carl Grodach said there was an argument that operations like Visy's paper recycling were no longer appropriate in that location.

Professor Grodach described Victoria's industrial zoning regulations as antiquated.

"I don't think the zoning has been reviewed in a serious and comprehensive way in ages," he said.

"Victoria has a new strategic 10-year industrial plan and it is entirely focused on expanding industrial space in the outer suburbs.

Professor Grodach said Visy had shown it was possible to move large operations such as its recycled glass manufacturing plant from inner Brisbane.

"Visy should eventually move [from Reservoir]," he said.

"But there are a lot of other smaller and lower impact industrial activities that need that inner/middle space and are dealing with similar conflicts because planning is behind the times."

The local state MP Nathan Lambert has been engaging with residents over the odour from the Visy site, including regularly doorknocking homes.

"It is a common occurrence to talk to one person who says, 'look, I don't smell anything at all, there's no issue' and then literally next door have someone say, 'this is a really strong smell and I'm thinking of moving out'," he said.

He agreed that the work Visy and the EPA had done over several years had not eliminated the problem.

"While things have improved, there are still a significant number of residents who are experiencing an odour and, particularly for some when a warmer northerly wind comes through, that's making their lives quite unpleasant.

"That's not an acceptable situation," Mr Lambert said.

But he said the state government had already "significantly overhauled" Victoria's industrial planning laws, requiring corporations to manage pollution, including odours.

"Planning laws move so slowly," he said.

"Of course, you could think about reforming them, but I suppose that would not be something that would change the set of circumstances that we're finding up in north-west Reservoir."

A state government spokesperson said Victoria's planning laws gave industries and communities clear directions about land usage in inner and outer suburbs.

"We've modernised planning for industrial land to give clearer rules about where industry should operate, protect important industrial areas and help manage the impact on nearby communities," they said.