Wasteful Election: How To Make Voting More Sustainable

The recent federal election was the nation’s largest to date, with a huge amount of waste produced by traditional voting processes. RMIT experts explain how future elections could be made more sustainable.

Co-authors Lisa Given, Gary Rosengarten and Matt Duckham

Key points:

• The Australian Election Commission amassed 250,000 pencils, 240,000 vests, 80,000 ballot boxes and 5,000 rolls of tamper-proof tape to stock some 7,000 polling places for the 2025 federal election.
• Australia needs to mandate a cradle-to-grave approach to creating, using, recycling and disposing of election materials.
• Many countries are “greening” their elections. In 2019, India’s election commission directed parties to eliminate single-use plastic including corflutes.
• Australia relies heavily on disposable election materials. While many of these can be recycled, it’s better to avoid single-use materials.
• Other countries are introducing online voting to reduce waste. One study in Estonia found the carbon footprint of paper-based voting was 180 times greater than internet-based voting.
• Some print materials may always be needed, because not all voters can access digital content or vote online. But the current situation is unsustainable.
• Australia’s newly elected officials have an opportunity to green future elections, adopting a more sophisticated approach to voting in a digital age. There’s no excuse for producing mountains of plastic and paper waste every three or four years.