The Environmental Group Limited
What the PFAS Senate Inquiry 2025 Means for Industries, Councils and the Community
The PFAS Senate Inquiry 2025 into per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) has reinforced a reality that communities, regulators and operators have been grappling with for years: PFAS contamination is widespread, persistent and requires coordinated, long-term solutions.
The full report, tabled in Parliament, highlights the scale of the challenge and the urgency for action. You can read the official document here.
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Table of Contents
Key Findings from the PFAS Senate Inquiry 2025
PFAS has become a defining environmental issue of this decade. The Inquiry confirmed several key points:
- Contamination extends across multiple sectors — including landfills, wastewater treatment, industrial processing, emergency response sites and agricultural land.
- Communities remain concerned about the potential impacts on drinking water, ecosystems and long-term public health.
- Regulators are tightening standards, and further reforms are expected as understanding of PFAS behaviour and risks continues to evolve.
- “Business as usual” is no longer viable for operators managing PFAS-impacted waste or water streams.
These findings reflect what many councils and industries have already experienced: PFAS contamination is not isolated, nor is it easily addressed with legacy approaches.
Why Traditional Treatment Methods Are Falling Short
One of the Inquiry’s strongest messages is that conventional technologies, such as adsorption-only systems, are increasingly unable to meet the scale and persistence of PFAS contamination.
Activated carbon and ion exchange resins can play an important role, but they ultimately concentrate PFAS rather than remove it from circulation. This creates an ongoing need for media replacement, transport, reprocessing and disposal, all of which introduce cost, risk and additional environmental load.
The Senate report emphasises the importance of solutions that minimise long-term liabilities, reduce reliance on consumables, and offer clearer pathways for full PFAS lifecycle management.
PFAS Extraction: Moving From Temporary Control to Permanent Removal
Across Australia and internationally, attention is shifting toward extraction-based technologies that remove PFAS entirely from the water stream rather than simply transfer it to another medium.
Extraction systems allow operators to:
- Isolate PFAS at high concentrations, greatly reducing the volume of material requiring final destruction.
- Lower operational costs by reducing or eliminating frequent media replacement.
- Improve compliance confidence, particularly as standards continue to tighten.
- Support circular water strategies, aligning with sustainability goals and community expectations.
At The Environmental Group, we have invested in extraction technology because it aligns with these long-term outcomes. Our approach focuses on isolating PFAS for responsible downstream destruction, delivering a more complete and future-ready treatment pathway.
Learn more about our PFAS Extraction Technology.
How the PFAS Senate Inquiry 2025 Impacts Treatment Expectations
The Inquiry is likely to influence policy, regulation and community expectations in several ways:
- Tighter Discharge Requirements
Operators can expect more stringent thresholds for PFAS levels in wastewater, stormwater, leachate and groundwater.
- Greater Scrutiny on Treatment Outcomes
Councils, auditors and regulators will increasingly differentiate between “temporary removal” and “true extraction.”
- Pressure to Demonstrate Long-Term Risk Reduction
Solutions that merely shift PFAS into another consumable stream will face rising operational, financial and compliance pressure.
- Increased Need for Transparent, Trackable Treatment Processes
Demonstrating accountability, from extraction through to destruction, will become increasingly important.
How The Environmental Group Supports Future-Ready PFAS Management
While the Senate Inquiry outlines the challenge, our role is to help industries and government navigate what comes next.
Our work focuses on:
- Providing practical, engineering-based solutions that integrate extraction with existing or new site infrastructure.
- Delivering systems that scale, from small remote facilities to large, high-throughput operations.
- Reducing the long-term environmental and financial liabilities associated with PFAS management.
- Partnering with councils and operators to support compliance, reporting and continuous improvement.
Our aim is not to sell a product; it is to help organisations transition from uncertainty to clarity with technology that matches the scale of the problem.
A Collective Responsibility for a Cleaner Future
The PFAS Senate Inquiry 2025 is a turning point. It provides the political and regulatory momentum needed to address PFAS contamination in a meaningful way. But real progress will require collaboration across government, industry and the environmental engineering sector.
At The Environmental Group, we believe PFAS extraction represents a critical step toward protecting Australia’s water resources and reducing long-term contamination risks. The Inquiry makes it clear that now is the time for actionable, sustainable solutions.
Click the link for more information on our PFAS treatment capabilities.
