Corporate Waste Solutions: Issue 3

CORPORATE WASTE SOLUTIONS

RESPONSIBLE PROSPERITY

ISSUE 3 $10.95 inc GST

WWW.CWSMAGAZINE.COM.AU

Those rolling stones Time to look at national waste policy FOR THE LOVE OF THE LAND Rose Read’s campaign for responsible prosperity INTELLIGENT ASSETS IoT drives the circular economy forward

BATTERY RECYCLING Voluntary versus mandatory?

ISSUE 3 | 2016

BLACK GOLD How printer toner is paving the future TARGETS OR OUTCOMES Which are we pursuing to achieve zero waste?

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WE’RE LOOKING INTO THE

AND WE’RE ACTIVELY ACHIEVING CARBON EMISSIONS REDUCTION. REMONDIS Australia Pty Ltd is one of Australia’s leading waste management companies, offering comprehensive collection, treatment and disposal solutions and services for commercial and municipal customers.

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FUTURE

REMONDIS AUSTRALIA SERVICE DIVISIONS RECYCLING

MUNICIPAL

RECOVERY

RE-EARTH: ORGANICS

LIQUID

PROCESSING

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Contents Issue 3 18

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OPENING FEATURE

OPINION

CASE STUDY

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Batteries: finding the right solution

Those rolling stones

Paving the futureÂ

Are we pushing boulders uphill just to see them roll back on top of us? The need for greater coordination in national waste policy.

Who would have thought recycled printer toner would turn into roads of gold? The extraordinary success of TonerPave.

Recycling the millions of batteries discarded in Australia each year remains a huge challenge for the industry.

CONTENT PARTNER

18 How landfill sites benefit the environment REMONDIS Australia looks at how waste managers are changing the perception of landfill in Australia.

40 33 A revolutionary year We are finally closing the loop on energy storage. Will we look back on 2016 as the year it all truly began?

PROFILE

26 For the love of the land One of Australia’s long-standing advocates for responsible prosperity, Rose Read is still thriving on the challenges.

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A fruitful partnership Unusable fruit and vegetables from Sydney Markets are being turned into fuel.

MARKETING

32 A question of trust What does the buying public think about sustainability and does it shape their purchasing decision?

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FEATURES

INNOVATION

PROPERTY

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Organics and saving the Great Barrier Reef

Connecting the links

Targets or outcomes: which are we pursuing?

Land-based run-off, ocean acidification and other pressures are taking their toll on the Great Barrier Reef.

The Internet of Things is unlocking the circular economy by changing the way we use resources and energy.

We’re setting targets, goals and commitments to achieve zero waste, but do they always lead to better outcomes?

PRODUCT STEWARDSHIP

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50

CWS REGULARS

Energy from Waste – getting it off the ground

The true cost of furniture

8

Editor’s comment

Can Australia afford cheap furniture?

While the Australian industry is working on standards, it’s almost impossible to self-regulate.

16

Product showcase

Six Energy from Waste facilities are currently proposed around the country but Australia is yet to see an EfW facility become shovel ready.

66 Government update 60 Driving the right outcomes

66 Events

With the rise of electric vehicles, what are the current trends for effective management of the end-oflife environmental impacts for their batteries?

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www.cwsmagazine.com.au

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UNCOVER SOLUTIONS & INNOVATIONS

AT AUSTRALASIA’S LEADING WASTE AND RECYCLING EXPO The Australasian Waste & Recycling Expo (AWRE) returns to Sydney this year featuring its most extensive Seminar Series to date, including the new ‘ENVIRO Keynote Session’ in association with WMAA. Join industry leaders and professionals for two days of networking, discussion and innovation.

* REGISTER FREE AT AWRE.COM.AU

10-11 AUGUST 2016 SYDNEY SHOWGROUND SYDNEY OLYMPIC PARK

*Entry is free for the exhibition only. Passes for the Seminar Series, ENVIRO Keynote Sessions and Networking Events can be purchased at an additional cost.

Key Industry Partner

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Supported by

Principle Media Partners

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Publisher Joanne Davies

Editorial

Editorial Editor Michelle Dunner michelle.dunner @ niche.com.au Managing Editor Ben Creagh Assistant Online Editor Sara Kirby Subeditor Madeleine Swain

Wasteful by design

D

id you throw anything away today? Before I consign something to the rubbish bin I now consider whether it has any intrinsic value.

In my apartment block, the ability to recycle is a relatively recent phenomenon; we’re part of a scheme operated by the City of Melbourne called ‘Green Money’ – we rack up reward points for every cubic centimetre of material we place in the designated bins at our block. The program has since evolved into an app where I can earn more points for taking on challenges around the city – not just what I can do at home.

And therein lies the rub – we all know we shouldn’t throw out a lot of what routinely ends up in the trash, but are we being conditioned to expect a direct ‘reward’ for separating plastic from paper? I’ve not yet taken up any of the benefits or redeemed any of my points, but I have to admit it’s a nice feeling to see the counter ratchet up.

But I’ve been as guilty as anyone of throwing out something broken or something toxic without a thought for the implications. Sometimes it comes down to an inescapable fact that the product I’ve shelled out for is just really badly designed. There’s an interesting move afoot in Europe as I write this, asking the public to ‘dob in’ deficient designs with a view to getting them removed from the market or reworked along more sustainable and reusable lines.

The biggest issue for me is batteries, which, in the past, I admit to throwing away. In researching this issue’s lead story, ‘Batteries: fi nding the right solution’, I became aware of a great number of very convenient ways of recycling these pesky cylinders. It’s something I’m certainly going to support.

We also feature some inspiring case studies this issue, including the extraordinary success of TonerPave, and what the furniture industry is doing about managing end of life. I hope you enjoy the read and don’t hesitate to email me with any feedback.

Michelle Dunner Editor

CONTENT PARTNER CONTRIBUTION A Corporate Waste Solutions Content Partner is an organisation with which we’ve entered into a partnership to collaborate on content for the magazine. In this issue, the thought leader is: REMONDIS AUSTRALIA’S DAVID WRENN David Wrenn is sales manager for REMONDIS Australia at the Swanbank Renewable Energy and Waste Management Facility in Queensland.

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Advertising National advertising manager Lachlan Oakley lachlan.oakley @ niche.com.au (03) 9948 4952 Production Art director Keely Atkins Production manager Jamuna Raj jamuna.raj@niche.com.au Digital prepress Monique Blair Publishing Chairman Nicholas Dower Managing director Paul Lidgerwood Commercial director Joanne Davies Content director Chris Rennie Financial controller Sonia Jurista Subscriptions Subscription enquiries Call 1800 804 160 or email subscriptions@niche.com.au Cover: E-waste campaigner Rose Read.

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CWS ISSN 1320-3975 Advertisers and contributors of editorial to CWS Magazine acknowledge they are aware of the provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 and the Trade Practices Act 1974 in relation to false and misleading advertising or statements and other unfair practices and of the penalties for breach of provisions of those acts. The publisher accepts no responsibility for such breaches. CWS Magazine is published bi-monthly. Opinions expressed by contributors are their own and not necessarily endorsed by the publisher. www.cwsmagazine.com.au © 2016 HH & M Media Pty Ltd

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Are we pushing boulders uphill just to see them roll back on top of us? NICK HARFORD looks at the need for greater coordination in national waste policy.

Comment

Those rolling stones

D

evelopment of waste and recycling policy is a lot like the legend of Sisyphus – it can feel like rolling a boulder up a great hill just to see it roll back down again.

But every now and then the rock gets rolled over the top, and actions and outcomes abound. Like most areas of good policy development, in waste there is nonetheless the need to grind out and test responses time and time again.

To force the analogy a bit, what we are seeing in waste policy in Australia at present is not a collective attempt to roll that boulder, but a fractured approach where industry players and governments are pushing their individual pebbles down the policy path.

Some policy advances are being made, but the boulder is not really going anywhere at present.

This fractured approach is not delivering a good outcome for Australia, our environment or our economy. But there are perhaps winds of change. Of late there has been a noticeable outpouring of calls from waste and recycling industry leaders for greater policy cohesion and consistency.

The Waste Management Association of Australia (WMAA) is calling for greater national leadership. WMAA released a five-point plan, arguing strongly that the economic importance of the waste and resource recovery industries and the need for appropriate protection of the environment and public health demands greater national coordination and consistency.

The Australian Council of Recycling (ACOR) is warning that aspirations for resource recovery are threatened, and the sector’s strong economic and environmental contribution is at risk of being squandered.

Pointing to declining scrap metal prices and a stagnant overall national recycling rate, ACOR argues that the absence of

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What we call waste is a sign of inefficiency. It is not acceptable nor is it in the best interest of Australia’s economy or environment for people to continue to throw away and send to landfill materials that have an economic value.

a consistent national approach and suitable policy interventions are lowering our standard of waste management and resource recovery.

Some may well say that these industries will seek interventions to benefit them and their members, but there is an underlying issue of potential public good that is hard to refute.

What we call waste is a sign of inefficiency. It is not acceptable nor is it in the best interest of Australia’s economy or environment for people to continue to throw away and send to landfill materials that have an economic value, can generate environmental improvement or may cause environmental harm.

Having said that, the amount of waste material generated in Australia is often beyond the direct control of individuals and organisations. The totality of waste generated in Australia – especially nonorganic waste – is partly a function of population, income and urbanisation, and partly, and increasingly, a function of global production and consumption.

The resource recovery side of waste management is also increasingly influenced by global factors. Solid waste materials recovered for recycling are priced and traded globally. Australia is presently a net exporter of many recovered materials such as paper, plastics, metals and many components from e-waste.

Waste of course can be reduced and better managed through increased awareness that leads to behaviour change – either upstream in product design, manufacture and distribution, or at the ‘end-of-pipe’ disposal point. Such change can influence waste generation while also enabling greater resource recovery and economic generation.

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However, raising awareness and changing behaviour conflicts with the market forces of global production and consumption.

So where the market is not delivering good waste management, where valuable resources are being lost and where health and the environment are exposed to risk, policy needs to address market failures and provide appropriate interventions.

In waste this is best done through direct regulation of materials (such as mandated treatment of a particular waste or a ban from landfill) and through market price signals that incentivise behaviour change and investment.

Such change is happening. It’s just not happening at a large scale and with any consistency and coordination across the country.

Waste and recycling policy is not dramatically different to many other areas of our economy and policy, which are also suffering from lack of coordination and consistency. The Council of Australia Governments (COAG) and the whole commonwealth/state relationship for policy and program delivery have both seen a tug of war between governments and other stakeholders in recent years.

A difference with waste is that we already have an agreed roadmap for waste and recycling – the National Waste Policy.

Seven years on from initiation of the National Waste Policy, its aims and key strategies remain valid. It remains relevant to Australians, our environment and the waste and recycling industries. As the policy is due to expire in 2020, it is timely to revisit and pursue means to refresh and renew it.

The National Waste Policy is an agreement between all Australian governments that aims to:

■ avoid generation of waste and reduce waste for disposal ■ manage waste as a resource ■ ensure waste treatment, disposal, recovery and reuse is safe, scientific and environmentally sound, and ■ contribute to the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, energy conservation and production, waste efficiency and the productivity of the land.

As part of the agreement there was a focus on six key areas that then informed 16 priority strategies. Jurisdictions took leadership for each of the strategies, and eight working groups were established to manage, track and implement the strategies and commitments.

This well-structured approach and coordinated activity provide an excellent framework to progress all the key waste and recycling issues, to ensure the aims and focus are maintained and to grind away to ensure barriers to economic and environmental improvement are removed.

It has achieved a number of good outcomes to date – most notably the Product Stewardship Act and the product stewardship schemes it has, if not directly spawned, aided. These include the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme (NTCRS), Paintback, FluoroCycle and Tyre Stewardship Australia, as well as endorsement for the long-running MobileMuster.

In this regard, while the NTCRS has attracted a lot of criticism because of failed recyclers and some poor outcomes, what cannot be refuted with respect to the scheme is this: if it were not in place e-waste would be a bigger problem.

So the National Waste Policy is there and has been shown to be effective in delivering

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nationally consistent and progressive approaches to better waste management and resource recovery. The problem is that there hasn’t really been any coordination and consistency since 2013.

That’s when COAG’s decision to streamline its structure saw the ‘revocation’ of the Standing Council on Environment and Water. This was replaced by the ‘Meeting of Environment Ministers’ that, when they met to decide ongoing priority matters, decided the National Waste Policy was not a priority.

In 2009, the decision to endorse the National Waste Policy was agreed by all governments, as was the decision four years later that it was no longer a priority.

That doesn’t mean nothing has happened since 2013. States and territories have rolled the policy rock over the top.

New South Wales, with ‘Waste Less, Recycle More’ and container deposits, has certainly pushed on with structural and infrastructure

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reform. Western Australia has significant investment in waste to energy on the table and the ACT and Northern Territory have implemented fresh initiatives attracting investment and infrastructure.

Other jurisdictions have been less active, and Victoria stands out for its inertia.

Successive Victorian governments have sought to distance themselves from the policies of predecessors and embarked on organisational restructures and producing plans in lieu of reform and progress. To its credit the state did lead the development of Paintback and has mooted a ban on e-waste and plastic bags from landfill.

Queensland remains at odds with all other states as it is without a landfill levy.

The low landfill charges and the lack of a price signal to drive innovation, investment and improvement are attractive to some – that’s why a lot of waste is going to Queensland landfills from other states. On

the upside, Queensland has mooted landfill bans for a number of priority wastes and is actively working on the introduction of a container deposit system.

What progress the states and territories have made serves to highlight that, as a nation, we have not travelled far. The progress made is, for the whole nation, piecemeal.

The National Waste Policy – the policy agreed to by the Commonwealth and all states and territories – sets out a way to take a shared responsibility whereby each government could work to its strengths and progress the 16 key waste strategies.

In large, the steps taken by the states and territories in the last three to four years are good and should be commended, but without a nationally consistent and coordinated approach to the overall issues facing waste and resource recovery these measures will just be pockets of distinction.

National leadership does not mean pointing the finger at the federal government – it does not have the powers to manage the vast bulk of waste issues.

The states and territories are best placed to deliver the best outcomes for most issues, and will not give up their authority anyway.

National leadership means the states and territories, the commonwealth and industry leaders working and communicating together. It means a focus on the benefits of consistency and cohesion to significantly advance waste and resource recovery practices, and deliver better economic, environmental and social outcomes. The National Waste Policy provides the blueprint to get that focus back on track and get the boulder moving again. ■

Nick Harford is the managing director of Equilibrium.

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Lewis, AB RI le n e –H

“Starting slowly and learning as we go is a better way forward than being fully legislated and having to meet arbitrary targets.”

“Far from being suspicious of government motives in the area of recycling, I respect them.

The intent of government in this space is invariably environmental and community protection coupled with resource recovery.”

– Rowan Hodge, Battery World

“The transport sector is one of Australia’s fastest growing sources of emissions. Uptake of electric vehicles, when linked to a cleaner supply of electricity, has the potential to provide reductions in the passenger and light commercial vehicle segments.”

– Shailesh Tyagi, Deloitte Sustainability

“While the AFA and AFRDI are working tirelessly to implement and develop standards, these need legislative support from both state and federal governments.

It’s become nearly impossible for the industry to self-regulate.”

– Tony Rogers, Woods Furniture

“There’s a growing incentive for proven resource recovery solutions in the face of increasing waste disposal levies, and a genuine desire from customers to sustainably manage all waste streams.”

– Ben Sullivan, Veolia

“Assuming an average composting facility size of 60,000 tonnes, around 20 new facilities would need to be built to process the 1.28 million tonnes of FOGO potentially available.”

– Mike Ritchie, MRA Consulting

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‘This connectivity allows smarter decisions – and in many cases that actually means better use of the physical assets around us.”

– Sandy Rodger, on the role of the Internet of Things

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“The National Waste Policy has been effective in delivering nationally consistent and progressive approaches to better waste management and resource recovery.

The problem is that there hasn’t really been any coordination and consistency since 2013.”

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– Nick Harford, Equilibrium

“Any circular economy initiative can’t be done in isolation – it requires partnerships.”

“Generally the community has no understanding of what product stewardship means. Indeed, business and local government are still trying to understand.”

– Rose Read, Drop Zone

Commitment to social and environmental responsibility is surpassing some of the more traditional influences for many consumers.

Consumer goods brands that fail to take this into account will likely fall behind.

– Grace Farraj, Nielsen.

“The circular economy is here. We need to refocus the discussion from an alternative waste disposal facility to a guaranteed source of clean energy that closes the loop and redefines the waste hierarchy.”

– Emmanuel Vivant, Suez

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“Energy storage is important, both for Australia and globally, because it allows us to time-shift energy from when it’s generated to when it’s needed.”

– Simon Hackett, Redflow

“Zero waste demonstrates a need to rethink how we operate our current systems and understand our sphere of influence to plug the holes in the resource pipeline and improve efficiency in a responsible way.”

– Patrick Arnold, Scott Ebsary, Foresight Environmental

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Innovation

Applications big and small, domestic and industrial, there’s a slew of products aimed at resolving major issues in responsible prosperity.

Product showcase The fabric of recycling Screening and shading products manufacturer Gale Pacific has introduced recycling initiatives for its Australian coated fabrics.

It has started with Landmark Recycled 340, a new version of the Landmark technical fabric, Landmark, which has been used for flexible crop storage for over a decade.

While the original version usually has a three- to five-year lifespan before going into landfill, Gale Pacific is now able to recycle and reprocess it into Landmark Recycled 340, hailing it as the first recycled technical fabric design and made at its Australian facility.

“Landmark Recycled 340 was first manufactured in June 2015 and we have been conducting field and lab trials since then,” says Emily Joyce, category manager – commercial at Gale Pacific. “This coming grain season will be the first time the recycled PP polyfabric will be manufactured and supplied on a large scale.”

The recycling process involves shredding and washing the end-of-life fabric, then extruding it into pellets. The pellets are then sent to Gale Pacific’s unique extrusion coating plant in Melbourne to be converted into the new version. The manufacturing process results in a strong, durable and environmentally friendly new product that has been laboratory and field-tested, across tensile strength, flex crack resistance and UV durability.

Joyce says the reaction in the marketplace has been very positive.

“Each of the grain sites where the recycled fabric is being tested has reported that there has been no variation from the original fabric… The fabric gives large volume users an alternative to landfill, which has a huge benefit, not only to their sustainability practices, but also their

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bottom line as they no longer have to pay for landfill disposal.”

And in the long term? “The original product will always be required to enable us to make the recycled version, but we will manufacture less of the original fabric and more of the Recycled version,” explains Joyce. “At this stage we estimate that the fabric could be recycled up to three times before it can no longer go back in to Landmark Recycled; at that point though the fabric can still be recycled, it will just be used in alternative end products.”

Pumping it up A new range of renewable energy heatpump models for domestic and commercial use has been released by the Australian arm of Stiebel Eltron.

The company released two new models in Australia in July – the WWK 222 (H) and WWK 302 (H). Sales director Glenn Day says the air source hot water heat pump systems harvest natural energy to reduce electricity consumption, lower hot water energy bills and reduce environmental impact. “All aspects of the design have been carefully considered from the perspective of the homeowner through to the installer,” Day says.

Compared to conventional electric hot water systems, energy consumption for heating water can be reduced by more than 70 percent by using a WWK 222 (H) or WWK 302 (H). The units are eligible for government rebates and help to achieve Australia’s Renewable Energy Target by 2020.

Renewable energy powering Sydney Water waste treatment plant The Bondi Wastewater treatment plant is now producing enough renewable energy from waste to power 100 percent of the plant.

That milestone was announced last month

by New South Wales Minister for Primary Industries, Lands and Water, Niall Blair.

“The NSW Government is committed to finding new and better ways to lower the amount of electricity we use from the grid, not only to benefit the environment, but also to reduce operating costs of utilities and lower customers’ bills,” Blair said.

“This project is yet another great example of Sydney Water using research and innovation to turn biogas into renewable energy to power the entire plant, which benefits the environment and reduces operating costs.

“Not only will this project minimise the impact on the electricity grid network, it will also be able to return 13 percent net energy back to the grid – which is enough to power about 150 households a year.”

Sydney Water is generating more than 20 percent of its total energy needs across its network through a number of innovative renewable energy projects. This has also reduced greenhouse emissions by over 70,000 tonnes a year. ■

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Content partnership: REMONDIS

How landfill sites in Australia are benefiting the environment DAVID WRENN from REMONDIS Australia discusses how waste managers in Australia are changing the perception of landfill by utilising opportunities to make it more environmentally friendly.

L

andfi ll should no longer be considered a necessary evil, but instead a growing opportunity for the Australian waste management industry and communities around the country.

Australia has a strong dependence on landfi ll as a form of waste management.

The majority of waste not recycled or reused is disposed of at landfi lls across the country, a situation that is set to continue in the coming decades.

However, the waste management industry in Australia is moving towards more environmentally friendly outcomes at landfill sites, driven by new technologies and evolving government legislation.

In the past, landfi ll practice in Australia may not have focused on sustainable outcomes as much as it could have. Landfi ll practice has developed rapidly in the past decade, however, with sustainable opportunities, such as landfi ll gas-to-energy conversion, becoming more popular with local governments and waste management companies around the country.

Understanding the opportunities that landfi ll sites offer in Australia, and building awareness of them among waste generators, has emerged as the next challenge for the industry.

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And through this education of modern landfi ll practices another opportunity presents itself – that is to shift the common perception that this method of waste management does little to positively impact the environment.

Our waste has to end up somewhere… it is about understanding the potential of our waste and making sure it fi nishes up being reused in a way that is best for the future of the industry.

impacting the environment by converting landfi ll gas to energy.

Swanbank, which is located in Ipswich, about 40 minutes from Brisbane, is a licensed regulated waste landfi ll that operates under several relevant environmental activities.

Set on a 250-hectare area, which was formerly a coalmine, the landfi ll site has been in operation since 1997 and has a 45-year expected operating life. Its annual intake of waste is in excess of 500,000 tonnes.

Minimising landfi ll gas emissions and producing energy has been a priority at the site since the renewable energy facility was launched in 2014. REMONDIS is a strong supporter of including renewable energy as part of Australia’s

ELIMINATING LANDFILL GAS Converting landfi ll gas to energy offers environmental and economic benefits to waste managers, energy users and communities. Landfi ll gas is generated by the breakdown of organic matter under anaerobic circumstances. Food scraps, garden organics, wood, paper and cardboard all make up the waste matter that generates this valuable resource.

Landfi ll gas can consist of up to 60 percent methane, which is about 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in trapping the atmosphere’s heat and contributing to global warming.

The REMONDIS Australia-operated Swanbank Renewable Energy and Waste Management Facility in Queensland is an example of a landfi ll site in Australia that is positively

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Content partner contaminated soil, and untreatable waste.

A by-product of the landfi ll process that is closely managed at Swanbank is leachate, which is commonly known as the liquid that drains, or leaches, from landfi ll sites.

REMONDIS believes it is essential that leachate be managed effectively at its landfi ll sites to avoid it running into the local aquatic environment, and potentially having a detrimental impact on the area’s biodiversity and the sensitive species that inhabit it.

As part of the lined cell, Swanbank collects and manages any accumulation of leachate to ensure it never leaves the site to damage the environment.

ONGOING LANDFILL COMMITMENT

energy mix, alongside both coal and gas. The renewable energy facility, a joint venture between REMONDIS and renewable energy expert LMS Energy, is now leading the way as a landfi ll gas-toenergy operation in Australia. The facility extracts gas by drilling holes into the landfi ll, before the gas is then used to fuel an engine, which generates electricity into the energy grid for the local community.

It creates reliable base-load renewable energy 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The renewable energy facility exports

about 12,000 megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity each year, powering more than 2000 homes in the Ipswich region.

In addition to the energy generated, the conversion of gas is also an effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by destroying and reprocessing the methane. The combustion of landfi ll gas from the facility abates more than 61,000 tonnes of carbon each year.

This has been achieved by extracting about 7.2 million cubed metres of gas from the landfi ll operation, which has also resulted in a saving of about 26.4 million litres of water.

ADVANCED FACILITY While the renewable energy facility is the latest development at Swanbank to deliver benefits to the environment and local community, the site has focused on limiting its carbon footprint since being opened 20 years ago.

As waste management technologies have evolved so has the Swanbank facility, which features three landfi ll cells: lined landfi ll, unlined landfi ll and monocell.

The waste received by the lined landfi ll includes contaminated soil, municipal solid waste, commercial and industrial waste, quarantine waste, putrescible general waste, regulated waste and green waste. The unlined landfi ll waste (also known as hardfi ll) received at Swanbank includes low-level contaminated soil, inert general waste, construction and demolition waste, asbestos and timber.

Waste received by the monocell includes blackjack and grease, highly

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REMONDIS Australia is committed to reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfi ll through a strategy of resource recovery, recycling and reuse. To achieve this the company has established significant relationships or partnerships with both government and businesses to deliver a sustainable future where waste is effectively managed.

While the Swanbank facility has a life expectancy of 45 years, its environmental benefits will continue well beyond the proposed closure, as will REMONDIS’ commitment to the region and local community.

The Swanbank facility is well-placed to deliver long-term benefits to the local community, with which the company continues to have strong interaction. The facility stimulates economic development in the Ipswich region by creating local jobs and contributing to the growth and diversity of the area.

Beyond the site’s proposed closure REMONDIS will continue to manage the site for a further 25 years and help transition the area into a recreational space for community use.

As the waste further degrades at the site over the years, the renewable energy facility will also continue to generate gas for the local electricity grid. The generators of the waste that fi nishes up at Swanbank can be assured that it is going to continue to have a positive impact for the community. ■ David Wrenn is sales manager for REMONDIS Australia at the Swanbank Renewable Energy and Waste Management Facility in Queensland.

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26/07/16 11:08 AM

Feature: Product stewardship

BATTERIES: finding the right solution Recycling the millions of batteries discarded in Australia each year remains a huge challenge for the industry, as MICHELLE DUNNER reports.

A

ustralians have an enormous appetite for batteries; chances are you’ve used several today without even thinking about them – the smoke alarms at home, in your mobile phone, that electric toothbrush, in the car.

According to Sustainability Victoria figures, each year Australians use around 10,000 tonnes of domestic batteries. Of those, around 70 percent are single-use, but there is an enormous range of batteries in the market, each with their own needs and requirements for recycling. Who then would blame the average consumer when most used batteries end up in landfi ll?

But associations, retailers, waste management companies and entrepreneurs are continuing to identify ways of deriving value from used batteries. Given that less than three percent of all batteries purchased in Australia are currently recycled, there is a lot of potential feedstock on offer.

As usage remains high and recycling low, it seems remarkable that mandatory product stewardship hasn’t come into force.

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Environmental consultant and head of the Australian Battery Recycling Initiative (ABRI), Helen Lewis says batteries have been on the priority list for the national Product Stewardship Act for several years, but progress has been slow. Challenges include the sheer number and variety of battery types and the range of companies that need to be engaged.

ABRI has been spending a considerable amount of time working on industry engagement to develop a voluntary recycling program for handheld batteries, with a goal of submitting a plan to state and federal environment ministers by the end of this year.

There has been progress – the Queensland Department of the Environment and Heritage Protection and the Battery Industry Working Group (BIWG) have funded a pilot program running in Toowoomba until early September. Called the Toowoomba Rechargeable BATTERYback Trial, it covers all rechargeable batteries up to five kilograms and includes standard batteries such as AA, AAA, C and D sizes, plus batteries used in power tools, computers and

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Feature

Battery World case study One of the organisations with a long-standing battery recycling program is Battery World. Here, general manager Rowan Hodge talks about the achievements.

How did your drop-off program come about and what are the key outcomes?

In 2007, long before ‘carbon footprint’ became a catchcry – a Battery World franchisee happened upon an innovation that would not only take up the challenge of reducing battery waste, but also engage the community like never before – forever changing the way everyday Australians thought about and disposed of their batteries.

It was a relationship businesses dream of: an alliance with Planet Ark and an increase in sales as much as 40 percent in the very first month culminating in 21 months in a row achieving doubledigit growth.

Townville franchisee Greg Leslie had the light bulb moment that would steer us towards one of the most successful responsible stewardship programs in Australia. This innovation was acknowledged with a National Excellence Award by the Franchise Council of Australia in 2012.

With his new store struggling, Greg knew he needed to bring people in, so he happened on the idea of getting consumers to drop off their old batteries for recycling. At the same time, he guessed they might hang around and check out the store and see just exactly what he carried.

Since then he has seen 300 tonnes of batteries go through his store alone. With the recycling program now an inherent cog in all of our stores, together we could fill the Gabba (Brisbane Cricket Ground) or SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground) 10 times over with the batteries we have collected.

Hundreds of thousands of schoolkids know about Battery World and BW Man and tell their parents about us. There is a referral process happening in schools with teachers referring Battery World’s website for teaching resources and we maintain strong links with environmental groups such as Planet Ark and the National Recycling Week.

But, more importantly, since 2007 Greg has continued to be our number one store and credits his growth to his staff and their enthusiasm for the recycling program. More than seven other battery retailers have closed in his vicinity while he continues to move forward – thanks to recycling.

Is there likely to be a wider industry-funded collection and recycling program in Australia?

To my knowledge there are a lot of business owners and recyclers in Australia with the will and desire

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to be more active with recycling. Many of these responsible corporate citizens engage with groups like ABRI and the Queensland Government’s Industry Working Group. Battery World is active in both of these groups.

Groups like these actively consider, trial and carry out all sorts of voluntary or partially funded recycling initiatives. Many of these efforts overlap, and not all of them are as effective as the work done for so many years by Battery World franchisees, but all recycling is good recycling! So we will continue to engage in this space.

As to whether there will ever be a truly national scheme, however funded, all I can say is, yes. It exists already at your local Battery World store. The local franchise owner pays at their own considerable expense in time and money to provide this service, but it is well worth it for their brand image, their sense of community, and to close the loop on the complete battery stewardship we offer all of our customers.

Are there any rumblings by government(s) to legislate or drive an agenda here? If legislation came about, what would you like to see?

As with any business group we prefer to see government behaving as an enabler rather than a regulator. Initiatives such as that of Battery World do untold good. It would be tragic to see any sort of heavy-handed regulation make these efforts more burdensome.

Far from being suspicious of government motives in the area of recycling, I respect them.

The intent of government in this space is invariably environmental and about community protection coupled with resource recovery. It seems to me that the agenda here is in translating the good intentions of government into policy that requires a delicate balancing act between motivating the right behaviours and arresting the wrong ones. At Battery World we tend to far outperform all existing government regulations in this space, so we tend to be called upon to advise government and industry rather than to live in fear of them.

As to what I would like to see from government in this area, I would have to say continued engagement with the private sector, and the expansion of funding to initiatives where big goals are clearly being kicked already. One example of such a program is in Lismore, New South Wales. The Lismore City Council with funding from the NSW EPA (Environment Protection Authority) is collecting sealed bags of recyclable hazardous products (including batteries) in normal kerbside recycling wheelie bins. These batteries are being collected, transported, sorted and shipped to a breaker for recycling. The program director, Kevin Trustum, tells me they have used 30,000 bags in 18 months! This shows the merits of government involvement when it is done right. What a fantastic outcome.

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Feature Another example of the critical need to get the balance right for government is the ongoing discussion of safe storage and transport of batteries.

This is a topic upon which ABRI and the responsible government agency are currently collaborating to consider the appropriate regulatory response (if any) since changes in the United Nations' recommendations began filtering through from some foreign jurisdictions.

I am hopeful that even with the noblest of intentions, the regulatory response here is not one that might curtail recycling by making it too burdensome or costly without any advance in environmental or safety metrics. I believe this is a very good example of the right parties being at the table to make sure the desire to regulate is kept in check where the industry is voluntarily doing a terrific job already. After all, unnecessary red tape doesn’t help anyone, and may tend to reduce the amount of material that is recycled.

Are there other programs/innovations overseas that you think may represent an opportunity in Australia?

In the recycling sense, yes, I suspect there may be some opportunities for improvement. It seems to me

“Starting slowly and learning as we go is a better way forward than being fully legislated and having to meet arbitrary targets.” – Helen Lewis, ABRI

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that the very limited options available in Australia for the recycling of lead acid batteries, coupled with tight restrictions on exporting these batteries for breaking overseas, leaves collectors of these batteries, like the many scrap metal operators who serve our network so well, somewhat starved for choice.

It would be nice to see free trade flourish in this space. Conversely, it is a shame to see products exported for recycling that could potentially be processed in Australia. Existing infrastructure and economics are against this presently, but this might just be an area where a carefully measured government investment could help bring about a whole new industry Down Under, while dramatically reducing the carbon footprint of sending this material to north-east Asia or Scandinavia presently.

What plans does Battery World have for further resource efficiency/recoverability?

Our plans for the future are the same as our past – recycle as much as we can! Battery World is very proud to have pioneered voluntary recycling in Australia. We note that others have followed, but the happy reality of recycling is that more is good!

We hope yet more retailers will come with us along this path. As for some specific measures, we will continue to enthusiastically participate in ABRI and to consult to government as we are with the Queensland Government presently, to explore, test and implement new recycling initiatives like the rechargeable battery recycling pilot in Toowoomba.

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Feature mobile phones, among other varieties. But the main thrust of the program is to collect data to assist with the design of future national voluntary schemes. ABRI is involved in the implementation of the trial along with Infoactiv, MRI and Planet Ark. “The focus is on rechargeable batteries because the feedback from some companies was that we should start with these because they are the most hazardous,” Lewis says. “I think most ABRI members would like to see an all-battery program, for many reasons, but not least of which it’s very convenient for consumers who aren’t willing or able to separate rechargeable from single-use batteries.”

Lewis says she’s heartened by the number of battery manufacturers participating in the working group.

“We’re making good progress with a few companies actively involved or keeping a close watch on developments, but there’s no doubt that, in a process like this, some companies will sit back and wait to see what happens.”

Some of the major brands and retailers actively involved include Energizer, Panasonic, Officeworks, Battery World, Canon and Bosch. Lewis says there are some gaps, for example in the power tool sector, but she is confident that organisations there will come on board. “This is a challenging process; there are so many different products with batteries in them – we need to do a brand audit, just to see who we need to get engaged.”

Unsurprisingly, a critical question for battery companies is the cost of any projected national scheme.

“That’s a question we can’t answer yet,” Lewis admits.

“But we’ll know a lot more after this pilot program.”

ANY VOLUNTEERS? ABRI says there’s a strong argument that it is beneficial for the industry to start its product stewardship program on a voluntary basis. “We need to design a program that works and that is cost-effective,” Lewis says. “It’s something where starting slowly and learning as we go is a better way forward than being fully legislated and having to meet arbitrary targets early in the process.

“We’ve taken note of what’s happened overseas. The Call2Recycle program in the US is mostly voluntary and entirely funded by the brands. All the major brands are involved. This is a model we’ve looked closely at, and they’ve also been helping us with data.”

In the US, Energizer has released a battery made from four percent recycled content. “That might not sound like much and there was some scepticism in the market when the product came out that it was just a bit of a greenwash, but it represents an important innovation in closed loop battery recycling that will hopefully lead to stronger markets for alkaline batteries in particular,” says Lewis.

She adds that the Meeting of Environment Ministers has given the industry the strong impression it is keen to support a voluntary process. “But some governments will be looking at regulation if it doesn’t work.”

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What types of batteries are we talking about?

What are the common types of batteries being used in Australia and can they be recycled?

■ household/single-use (AA, AAA, C and D or

alkaline, carbon-zinc, lithium, silver-zinc): can be recycled, avoid landfill if possible ■ nickel-cadmium (NiCd): used in rechargeable batteries, hazardous waste, must be recycled ■ nickel metal hydride (NiMH) or lithium-ion: used in laptops, non-hazardous waste, can be recycled ■ button cell: used in hearing aids and watches, contain silver and mercury, hazardous waste, can be recycled, and ■ automotive and sealed lead-based: used in car batteries, hazardous waste, can be recycled at auto part retailers or service stations.

Source: Clean Up Australia

What services are currently available?

SUEZ provides a battery recycling program across Australia for the collection of used lead acid batteries (ULABs) from vehicles, as well as common household batteries.

The ULABs need to be taken to a recovery centre while the company has battery recycling containers available for use in workplaces for other types. There are also public recovery centres.

The battery recycling service is specifically designed to collect all forms of day-to-day household batteries. The different types of both single-use batteries and rechargeable batteries collected are: ■ lead acid (Pb) ■ nickel cadmium (NiCad), sealed and vented ■ lithium ion – lithium ion polymer ■ lithium ■ alkaline ■ nickel metal hydride (Ni-MH) ■ single-use ■ rechargeable, and ■ mobile phones.

Battery World has a national recycling program in its stores for domestic batteries of all kinds and negotiates with businesses for bulk batteries. ALDI supermarkets also provides a free recycling service – look for the collection bin near the checkout area.

Batteries can also be dropped off at many local government transfer stations or public buildings for recycling, particularly in NSW, Victoria and WA. More information is available from the Australian Battery Recycling Initiative, www.batteryrecycling.org.au.

To find your nearest collection point location visit Planet Ark’s website at http://recyclingnearyou.com.au/batteries.

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Feature

“Far from being suspicious of government motives in the area of recycling, I respect them. The intent of government in this space is invariably environmental and community protection coupled with resource recovery.”

– Rowan Hodge, Battery World A lot is riding on the Toowoomba pilot. “We need to gain an understanding of the operational issues, working with retailers and councils, and take advantage of the learnings from overseas programs, as well as other Australian programs like what’s in place for e-waste.”

THE RETAILER’S PERSPECTIVE Lok-Man Shu, national sustainability manager for Officeworks says he welcomes the trial scheme. “The current trials are being implemented to establish whether the end customer can differentiate between single-use and rechargeable batteries, as well as to better understand the cost of recycling batteries to determine the viability of a voluntary scheme.”

Will the industry fund a collection and recycling program? “That depends on the results of the trial.

There will be more insight into the viability of an industry-funded program,” he says. “The main

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challenges I see are the willingness of consumers to differentiate between types of batteries, and how free riders (the companies not paying for battery recycling) are captured within any scheme to reduce the burden on companies doing the right thing.

“Free riders are always problematic because they can alter the fi nancial sustainability of a product stewardship program. I would like to see a level playing field where all battery brands contribute towards the stewardship of their products.”

Shu echoes the industry’s preference for a voluntary scheme. “If government wanted to pursue legislation, then Officeworks would prefer to see integration with the existing schemes, such as the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme. Like a lot of other brands and retailers, Officeworks is already captured in the scheme, so this would seem the most logical and efficient means to legislate.

“Officeworks has a range of successful product stewardship programs in place. I believe that most people want to do the right thing if you make it easy enough for them to do so. The key to our successful programs is making it simple for the end user and ensuring the fi nancial viability of the programs.

“In the case of batteries, Officeworks would like to see the trials progress quickly so we can determine if a voluntary scheme is viable. If not, we would like to see government pursue other options.” ■

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Profile

One of Australia’s longstanding advocates for responsible prosperity, Rose Read is still thriving on the challenges, as MICHELLE DUNNER reports.

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26/07/16 11:09 AM

G

rowing up on a farm in the New South Wales Southern Highlands, Rose Read says she’s always felt connected to the landscape around her.

While she’s swapped the lush meadows now for more corporate surrounds, the nature of circular thinking is still very much uppermost in her mind.

“I was exposed to the concept of cycles very early on,” she recalls. “I’ve never really been in an environment where the desire to have something new continually was ever critical.”

In between getting turned on to recycling by the ‘milko’ taking the glass milk bottles every morning, and working in the family’s garden, Read was intrigued by ecosystems – not that the term was necessarily in use; to Read it was just applied commonsense.

“I learned how things grew and what they relied on. The ecology was obvious – it was something I easily comprehended and it resonated with me. Any human interaction with an ecosystem has an impact; there’s a certain level of resilience within a system and a person, but if you push things too far it will change, or even break.”

It’s the interconnectivity between people, systems and ecology that Read has turned into a stellar career, which has encompassed pollution mitigation, waste management and product stewardship.

Her resumé is impressive – stints with Clean Up Australia and Clean Up the World, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and a number of state and national government working groups and committees.

But it was her role with the outstandingly successful MobileMuster campaign that made Read one of the major players in product stewardship and resource efficiency. In her 10-year stint leading the program, it became the first voluntary scheme to be accredited under the federal government Product Stewardship Act. Now, her wide interest in product stewardship is coming to the fore as chief executive of MRI’s Drop Zone, a government-approved co-regulatory arrangement under the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme (NTCRS).

It’s an enterprise that long time Australianowned electronics and battery recycling

An incentive to engage Read says a combination of education, research into consumer behaviour and increased awareness worked well for MobileMuster, but of most value were incentives.

“The campaign got people thinking about recycling and to question their need to hoard old mobiles. Indirect and direct financial benefits in particular were very effective. Some were as simple as a contribution to a charity, a supermarket voucher, or cash back on the phone.

“Now, with televisions and computers, we also want to recover the products efficiently and optimise the whole system. There are a few clunky bits and my goal is to remove these to make it easy for everyone to participate.

“We are already starting to do this by working locally with councils and social enterprises, such as City Mission in Launceston, and Kurrajong Waratah in Wagga Wagga. Each social enterprise is employing the long-term unemployed and people with disabilities. It’s a good starting point for some, a stepping stone to new roles, new jobs. I’m proud that it is offering great social benefits, as well as massive environmental ones.”

company, MRI, took over from logistics giant DHL in February this year.

The expansion of MRI’s service offering aims to provide electronic manufacturers and importers with a full product stewardship service – collection, recovery and best practice processing of products, under the auspices of the NTCRS. With a track record of community and stakeholder engagement as well as product stewardship, Read was a logical choice.

“Pretty much all my work from my study days has been dealing with resources in some way,” she says. “Community engagement has been a focus for me,

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but the other key thing is to work in a collaborative way with all the stakeholders, and that includes business as well as government at all levels.”

While Read started out in water management, she soon moved to the waste resource sector. “An opportunity came with Clean Up Australia. It was quite a good progression because I was involved in the restoration and clean up of waterways, which introduced me to the waste sector.”

With its significant public profile, Clean Up Australia showed the value of engaging everyday people. “I think there’s been a big change in community engagement,” Read says. “It’s very much mainstream now.

While there’s greater community expectation to be engaged in waste minimisation and recycling efforts, Read says the level of participation depends on the nature of the issue. “People’s knowledge has increased and the shift we’ve seen is evidenced by their desire to not throw mobile phones or batteries into the rubbish. Computers and TVs are similar.

But generally the community has no understanding of what product stewardship means.

“Traditionally, it’s been the role of local and state governments to develop a regulatory framework that drives responsibility and keeps resources out of landfill. But the product stewardship industry is now sharing this responsibility so there is a need for all to learn how to work together in new ways to optimise recovery.”

A major challenge for product stewardship, Read believes, is developing schemes that provide clear guidance for business, government and consumers on their roles while retaining flexibility to evolve and adapt quickly. “Products come and go, there are new materials and resources that have to be dealt with.

“It makes sense for businesses to acknowledge their responsibility – they really are the missing link in product stewardship because they haven’t been an active player in end-of-life strategies unless there was a commercial imperative to do so.

“Long-term waste management has to be more than just taking something to the tip. Product stewardship means finding new ways of bringing products back and optimising the way we use the materials.

We need to stop the straight line – make it, buy it, use it, throw it out. We need some right hand turns to feed back into the product life cycle.”

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26/07/16 11:10 AM

Case study

Who would have thought recycled printer toner would turn into roads of gold? MICHELLE DUNNER reports on the extraordinary success of Close the Loop.

Paving the future

W

hile opportunities abound in resource efficiency and product stewardship, turning a good idea into a successful business can take time.

In early June, Melbourne-based innovator Close the Loop was recognised

by Business Victoria and inducted into the Victorian Manufacturing Hall of Fame.

It was an accolade based, in part, on the company’s work to develop the state-ofthe-art TonerPave product. But, as Close the Loop sales and marketing manager Peter Tamblyn explains, TonerPave’s ‘overnight success’ has actually been 13 years in the making.

“Our resource recovery efforts have been well-documented and we’re recognised globally for what we do. While TonerPave has been a big contribution to our success, we apply our commitment to the reuse of recovered components into much more than that – a good example is the pens we make from recovered plastics and inks where the resources are not suitable for use in other products.

“That kind of mentality resulted in the Hall of Fame induction; TonerPave is often referenced as a shining light because it’s a product that has become commercially viable on a large scale. But it required a very long R&D process and, of course, enough resources to be able to deliver the volume and consistency of the product.”

TonerPave, where toner from discarded printer cartridges is blended with recycled oil and tyre rubber to produce a new kind of asphalt, was developed in partnership with infrastructure company Downer and the first roads built from the material were laid in 2013. Close the Loop says it produces a 23 percent lower carbon asphalt.

Downer has the exclusive Australian licence to use the product under its partnership with Close the Loop and has

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gone on to use it across the country. The product has also been laid in the US under a separate partnership deal.

“One of the challenges for us was that Downer requires a very consistent product, but every time a manufacturer makes a new printer range, they also make a new toner type. We have thousands of different types of toner in our warehouses. Our R&D has been devoted to ensuring a consistent product when it’s mixed with other waste products such as engine oil and tyre rubber. The true technology here is in the agglomeration of the product.”

Close the Loop has been collecting and storing waste and residual toner since inception. “We have never put toner into landfill or used it for waste-toenergy, which we consider the lowest form of recycling,” says Tamblyn. “We kept the toner because we always knew we’d come up with a solution. The chemistry involved here is considerable; we employ a full-time industrial chemist to spearhead our R&D.” Tamblyn believes the hallmark of success in any resource recovery idea or product is partnership. “Any circular economy initiative can’t be done in isolation – it requires partnerships. To reuse a resource requires for them to be collected, input from people in developing a new use for the resource and then someone to deliver it to a market.

“It’s all very well to have a great idea and develop a great product but, when it came to TonerPave, we needed someone to be able to build the roads with it. There is an exceptional industrial symbiosis between Downer and us – we’re aligned beautifully in our thinking about recovery and reuse of resources and our value systems as organisations. That partnership has been the real winner for us.

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Case study “We have never put toner into landfill or used it for waste-to-energy, which we consider the lowest form of recycling.”

– Peter Tamblyn, sales and marketing manager Close the Loop

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Case study

The CE100 initiative The Ellen MacArthur Foundation published a ground-breaking report in 2012 entitled: ‘Towards the Circular Economy: an economic and business rationale for an accelerated transition’. This led to the establishment of the Circular Economy 100 (CE100), described as a ‘pre-competitive innovation program’ to enable companies to develop opportunities and realise their circular economy ambitions faster.

CE100 brings together companies, governments, academia and innovators in a multi-stakeholder platform to help members develop knowledge, build their capacity, collaborate and network.

“A lot of players will always be involved in any circular economy initiative – and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation CE100 program is very focused on that and testament to the level of partnership activity that is needed to make this work. The more traditional route – doing things alone – is a sign of a linear economy.”

Tamblyn says he hopes the TonerPave success gives other organisations looking to embrace circular economy principles a light bulb moment. “I hope people look at this and, as a result, think more about resource recovery and reuse. We’re certainly open to more partnerships to bring more ideas to the market.”

Close the Loop works on a closed material loop basis with its original equipment manufacturers (OEM), including most of Australia’s printer and consumables companies.

“We collect the cartridges, separate the plastics and send those back to the manufacturers so they can use them again for the cartridges. The challenge with any of these processes is collecting enough material to make it a viable solution – that’s a key reason we’ve expanded our business to the US and Europe.

“But there’s also a lack of awareness from the average consumer that they can send these items back to us. The cartridge recycling programs are very effective in Australia, but other countries aren’t so environmentally aware.

“In Europe, for example, they tend to send a lot of resources to a waste-to-energy process. Yes, toner can be incinerated, but

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it’s actually a very high-grade polymer, an industrial grade, and has significant ability to be reused. It’s not dust – it’s gold.”

The scheme to recycle printer and photocopier cartridges in Australia remains voluntary. “It’s a real credit to our OEM partners that they did this voluntarily rather than waiting for legislation. The reason there is no legislation for cartridges is largely due to the programs we manage on behalf of the OEMs,” says Tamblyn.

“Close the Loop was the vehicle that they could use to make this work – the critical component to any product stewardship scheme is a viable collection infrastructure.”

The program echoes Close the Loop’s assertion that circular economy initiatives cannot succeed in isolation. Its guidelines for potential members state that organisations looking to transition to circular economy principles require “a systems redesign” and the involvement of “all key actors in the economy”.

“Through the CE 100 program, members can learn from each other’s failure and success, make use of the extensive network to test pilots and develop opportunities, and identify new ways of working together.”

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Case study

WHAT ABOUT QUALITY? Tamblyn says Downer consumes everything Close the Loop can produce of TonerPave in Australia. “There is still a degree of conservatism among some council engineers responsible for buying road construction, as there should be – 80 percent of Australia’s roads are purchased by local councils. The road network is Australia’s single largest asset – worth around $800 billion. It puts all other infrastructure into the shade.

“But we do hear stories of engineers insisting on a particular ‘recipe’ for the road construction materials. There’s still a lack of innovation and imagination in some local government areas, but this is a high quality product that is every bit as good, if not better than standard virgin polymers.

Toner fuses at 60 degrees, which is quite a low temperature. It stiffens the road, stops it rutting and requires less maintenance.

It also lasts longer. There’s also a 23 percent reduction in carbon footprint – for the same price.

“The other side of our relationship with Downer is that we work with the councils because we collect the cartridges from them, while Downer deals with the engineers buying the road. We have the ability to put the two of them together – we can tell the council how many cartridges we’re

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“Any circular economy initiative can’t be done in isolation – it requires partnerships.” – Peter Tamblyn, sales and marketing manager Close the Loop

collecting in their municipality and how many kilometres of TonerPave road that equates to. It’s a great circular economy story for them to tell their ratepayers.

“There are other organisations looking to develop environmentally-friendly asphalts, but it’s not in their DNA. Downer’s thinking is all about reuse and recovery and that’s how they differentiate themselves in the marketplace.” Last year Downer laid a 99 percent recycled road to much fanfare, and no doubt the pursuit of that goal will continue.

The company is working on a new version of TonerPave with Downer, called Tonerseal. “TonerPave is a hot mix asphalt that’s most commonly put down on roads in metro areas. Tonerseal is a spray-sealed version most commonly seen in rural areas – it’s a much cheaper road to build and this process enables more rubber to be included to produce a longer lasting and better road.

Downer put the first Tonerseal road down north of Brisbane in June for the Moreton

Bay Regional Council and the product has received a lot of interest, particularly in Queensland.”

Tamblyn says Close the Loop has evolved to be more than a recycling company.

“People think of us as recyclers, but we’ve become more of a data collection company. When I started with the business, we were selling recycling and, while that’s important, it has no intrinsic value to many of our manufacturer customers. But data is valuable when it comes to gauging the efficacy of product stewardship. We can tell them, for example, which cartridges have been pulled from printers that are still halffull of toner. It’s key intelligence they need for their post-consumer view.

“Linking cartridge returns to postcodes enables us to share the great circular economy stories like volumes of cartridges collected in a municipality to kilometres of road. It makes recycling tangible and real for the people using the cartridges in their printers and copiers.” ■

ISSUE 3 | 2016 CWS | 31

26/07/16 11:18 AM

Marketing

What does the buying public think about sustainability and does it shape their purchasing decision? MICHELLE DUNNER reports.

A question of trust

S

o you’re looking at transitioning from a linear to a circular business model. When it comes to the products or services you sell, how do you let the buying public know you’ve become more sustainable or resource efficient or ‘greener’?

Each year global research giant Nielsen polls consumer attitudes to sustainable goods. While the 2016 results are not yet available, the strong recent trend shows that sales of consumer goods from brands that can demonstrate their commitment to sustainability are growing faster than products from companies that can’t.

The survey covers 30,000 consumers in 60 countries, asking people to rate the influence of a range of factors on their decision to purchase – environment, packaging and price, to name just a few.

Senior vice president, Public Development and Sustainability at Nielsen Grace Farraj says an increasing number of consumers in developed countries “consider sustainability actions more of an imperative than a value-add”.

“Sustainability is a worldwide concern that continues to gain momentum – especially in countries where growing populations are putting additional stress on the environment.”

But it’s not just a matter of ‘build it and they will come’. The researchers found that the one sustainability factor that matters most for 62 percent of consumer purchases is brand trust.

This is a bonus for brands that already have a trusted relationship with consumers – there’s a pathway for them to introduce more products and grow. On the other hand, if sustainability is ignored, there’s the very real prospect of giving competitors a free kick – especially, the researchers say, with more socially-conscious consumers.

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Believe me when I tell you …

Nielsen asked survey respondents: “Thinking about the consumable brands (non-durable) you purchased in the last week, how much influence did the following factors have on your purchase decision?”

62% The products are made by a brand/ company that I trust.

59% The product is known for its health and wellness benefits.

57% The product is made from fresh, natural and/or organic ingredients.

45% The product is from a company known for being environmentally friendly.

43% The product is from a company known for its commitment to social value.

41% The product’s packaging is environmentally friendly.

41% The product is from a company known for its commitment to my community.

34% I saw an ad on television about the social and/or environmental good the product’s company is doing.

Interestingly, trust played a much bigger role in the purchasing decision than environmentally-friendly packaging, a company’s commitment to social value or, indeed, the company’s spruiking of its environmental credentials.

The report says that being able to show a commitment to sustainability is now a basic cost of entry for companies. “Regardless of their degree of commitment, companies across the globe are finding ways to leverage sustainability as part of their marketing strategy,” concludes the report.

There is a long-held perception among many consumers that more sustainable products cost more. The research found that 66 percent of people surveyed would be willing to pay more – and this is by no means confined to Millennials, or indeed other specific demographics.

The report showed consumers across regions, income levels and categories are willing to pay more, if doing so ensures they remain loyal to their values and sentiment regarding sustainability is consistent. “Those earning $20,000 or less are actually five percent more willing than those with incomes greater than $50,000 to pay more for products and services that come from companies who are committed to positive social and environmental impact,” the report found.

ENVIRONMENTAL VALUES – NOT JUST A GREENWASH An organisation’s commitment to the environment has the power to sway product purchase decisions for 45 percent of consumers surveyed.

“Consumers in developed markets are flooded by choice, often making them more sceptical and therefore harder to influence.

Consumers are starting to consider sustainable practices a basic cost of entry, rather than a market differentiator.”

Nielsen’s senior vice president of Reputation and Public Relations Solutions, Carol Gstalder says marketing of good deeds is expected by consumers, but will fall flat without authenticity and credibility.

“Using multiple communication methods is important to demonstrate good deeds –such as third-party validation, advertising or reporting actual work in the community on a website. A balanced approach is key for brand communicators, with the emphasis on demonstrating good deeds versus selfserving promotion.” ■

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

26/07/16 11:19 AM

We are finally closing the loop on energy storage, says SIMON HACKETT.

Opinion

A revolutionary year

I

n future, I believe that 2016 will be seen as the year when the energy storage revolution really began. Its inception occurred last year when Tesla Motors announced its planned Powerwall product, which transforms batteries from boring boxes into desirable home additions.

Energy storage is important, both for Australia and globally, because it allows us to time-shift energy from when it’s generated to when it’s needed. This redefines the whole concept of ‘baseload’ power generation by allowing us to store and forward renewable energy rather than continuing to burn fossil fuels to keep the lights on at night.

But this is the year that home batteries from Tesla and its many competitors, most of them offering lithium-based batteries, have hit the market. I’m executive chairman of one of those competitors, Redflow Limited, an Australian company based in Brisbane that has developed an alternative and, we believe, far better stationary energy storage device, the zinc-bromine flow battery.

Redflow’s 10-kilowatt hour (kWh) ZCell flow battery stores power by moving around a zinc bromide electrolyte solution within the battery. This fullyreversible process makes these batteries uniquely capable of a long lifetime of 100 percent charge and discharge cycles – a punishing energy-shifting regime that would deplete or damage most other battery types.

To give you a bit of context, batteries are in the same growth curve that solar panels were five to 10 years ago. Industry researcher IHS recently projected that the 500 home batteries sold in Australia last year will grow to 5000 batteries this year and it predicts more than 30,000 homes will install batteries by 2018.

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

43117_32-33_MK & OP simon.indd 33

Energy storage is important, both for Australia and globally, because it allows us to time-shift energy from when it’s generated to when it’s needed.

With this growth trajectory, the world faces an entirely new problem: what to do with all these batteries at the end of their usable life?

Lead acid batteries have a wellestablished recycling path for their toxic components, which include lead and sulphuric acid. Lithium-ion batteries were commercialised during the 1990s through the electronics industry, including notebook computers, mobile phones and, more recently, electric cars. As it’s cheaper to mine lithium than to recycle it, there’s not a lot of attention paid to recycling lithium-ion batteries.

While zinc-bromine flow batteries offer many advantages over their lead-acid and lithium-based competitors, an important differentiator is that they are easy to recycle or reuse.

The ZBM battery at the heart of the ZCell storage product is constructed from easily recyclable materials, such as polyethylene plastic, aluminium and galvanised bolts. The largest, and most expensive, part of the flow battery is the 100 litres of water-based zinc bromide electrolyte, which weighs about 140 kilograms. The beauty of this electrolyte is that, unlike lithium, it is cost-effective and practical to reuse it.

Zinc is readily available from mines, including some in Australia, while bromine is harvested from concentrated saltwater bodies, such as the Dead Sea in the Middle East and the salt lakes of the US. The zinc bromide electrolyte is installed into Redflow batteries as part of their

manufacture in North America by Flex, one of the world’s largest supply chain solution companies. Redflow’s battery products are warranted to deliver on their energy storage capability for at least 30,000 kilowatt hours of energy throughput or for 10 years (whichever comes first). The battery is intended to operate as a sealed system during that period, with no electrolyte servicing or refreshing required.

What turns the economics of battery recycling on its head is that, after 10 years, it is much cheaper for Redflow to recondition the old electrolyte from a ZBM than it is to buy new zinc bromide fluid.

After the process of ‘scrubbing’ the old electrolyte – which makes it as ‘good as new’ – Redflow can pour it into a new flow battery, providing another 10 years of energy storage.

Ready recyclability was a central part of the design criteria for the flow battery when Redflow started on it in 2005.

That was a time when concerns about battery toxicity were less prominent than they are today.

Energy storage, based on flow battery technology - and other designs that may emerge in future – offer the promise of enabling a sea change in how we take advantage of renewable power and meet our global climate change commitments – without requiring a costly process to remediate toxic by-products. ■

Simon Hackett is the executive chairman of Redflow Limited.

ISSUE 3 | 2016 CWS | 33

26/07/16 11:19 AM

Feature: Organics management

Organics and saving the Reef Land-based run-off, ocean acidification and other pressures are taking their toll on the Great Barrier Reef. VIRGINIA BRUNTON, DIMITRIS DIMOLIATIS and MIKE RITCHIE report on some possible waste management solutions.

T

he summer of 2015-16 was bad for the Great Barrier Reef. High sea temperatures and rising nutrient and sediment loads in run-off has resulted in 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef being affected by coral bleaching, according to an aerial and underwater survey conducted by the ARC Centre of Excellence.

The Queensland and federal governments are faced with the significant challenge of balancing environmental outcomes and social and economic demands of local and regional communities. Of the major threats to the Reef, the impact of the run-off is one of the few threats that can be tackled and managed with immediate positive effect.

Together, the governments have formulated a strategy for reef protection. The Reef 2050 plan aims to reduce nutrients by 50 percent, sediments by 20 percent and have 90 percent of the sugarcane production area operating under best management practices by 2020.

Here, we propose a possible solution that integrates food and garden organics (FOGO) waste management with reef protection.

SEDIMENT AND NUTRIENT THREATS TO THE REEF Extending for 2300 kilometres, the Reef was declared a Marine Park in 1975 and a World Heritage Area in 1981. Despite this protected status, its coral cover has declined from estimates of 50 percent in the 1960s to near 20 percent in 2011, according to a study led by Queensland academic Jane Waterhouse and published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Other studies also have shown worrying impacts.

Specifically, for the period 1985 to 2012, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) reported that average coral cover on the Reef had fallen by half. The current, ongoing mass bleaching event, reported by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, has been described as the worst in the Reef’s history and has most likely reduced coral cover even further than the 19.6 percent cover estimated by AIMS for 2015.

Declining water quality and climate change-induced coral bleaching are recognised as the greatest threats for Australia’s Reef, as well as others around the world.

Land run-off of suspended sediment and nutrients,

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26/07/16 2:35 PM

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MAY | JUNE 2016 CWS | 35

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Feature

together with the associated crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks, roughly account for 37 percent of Reef damage according to a 2012 academic study.

Crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks are driven by increases in nutrient availability, particularly dissolved inorganic nitrogen, because nitrogen is the main limiting nutrient, reported by the Australian Centre for Tropical Freshwater Research in 2010. These nutrients originate from rivers along the Queensland coast.

Sugarcane is by far the most dominant crop in the catchments draining towards the Reef and, according to ABS figures from 2015, it occupies over 394,000 hectares within its catchment.

Sugarcane production occurs on the low-lying land close to estuaries, creeks and river mouths. This proximity means that during high rainfall events there is little opportunity for entrapment of run-off sediment and nutrients in-stream or in-basin. Researchers

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have calculated that approximately five kilograms of nitrogen per hectare per year is leached and 1.6 tonnes per hectare per year of suspended sediment runs off from sugarcane production areas. For the Reef lagoon, academics have quantified that this means each year over 2700 tonnes of dissolved inorganic nitrogen and 1.3 million tonnes of suspended sediment threatens the ecosystem.

COMPOSTED FOGO – WHAT CONTRIBUTION CAN IT MAKE? The population of Queensland’s coastal local government areas, some 2.6 million people, generates 1.7 million tonnes of food and garden waste annually.

Currently, the vast majority of this waste goes to landfi ll where it decays and produces methane, contributing to the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and Reef-damaging climate change.

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

26/07/16 2:22 PM

Feature

Assuming an average composting facility size of 60,000 tonnes, around 20 new facilities would need to be built to process the 1.28 million tonnes of FOGO potentially available.

TABLE 1 ESTIMATED FOGO GENERATION BY QUEENSLAND HOUSEHOLDS Statistical area

Population (2013 estimate)

Currently collected GO1 (t)

Total household FOGO generated (t/year)

Maximum unprocessed current FOGO + GO (t/year)

Cairns

328,492

30,049

156,126

186,175

Townsville

233,907

28,896

111,171

140,067

Mackay

180,200

19,939

85,645

105,584

Fitzroy

229,485

36,177

109,070

145,247

Wide Bay

286,705

43,079

136,265

179,344

South-east QLD

1,426,878

302,591

678,167

980,758

Total

Â

460,731

1,276,444

1,737,175

TABLE 2

This material can be collected and composted to produce up to 1.2 million tonnes of quality compost to substitute for the mineral nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) fertilisers used in sugarcane farming. Applying the composted FOGO from all coastal councils to Queensland cane farms would replace an estimated 46 percent of the nitrogen and 80 percent of phosphorous requirements in annual sugarcane production.

NITROGEN AND PHOSPHORUS DEMAND BY QUEENSLAND SUGARCANE FARMS AND ESTIMATED OFFSET BY FOGO COMPOST OVER YEAR ONE OF CULTIVATION Statistical area

Area of Sugarcane Sugarcane % FOGO sugarcane demand demand +GO N (ha) for N (t) for P (t) substitution potential

% FOGO +GO P Substitution potential

Cairns

76,546

9492

2756

26%

45%

Townsville

137,337

17,030

4944

11%

19%

Mackay

130,158

16,140

4686

9%

15%

Fitzroy

-

-

-

-

-

Wide Bay

49,661

6158

1788

38%

66%

South-east QLD 6190

768

223

1687%

2905%

Total

49,587

14,396

46%

80%

THE BENEFITS FOR THE REEF Soils with high organic matter reduce run-off. The value for the Reef in substituting mineral fertilisers with organic forms of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, is that the organic forms are 50 percent less likely to leach into waterways. Sydney scientist Dr Warwick Dougherty published a study in 2014, demonstrating this in sandy soils along the Hawkesbury-Nepean River in New South Wales.

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

43117_34-39_F runoff1.indd 37

399,893

ISSUE 3 | 2016 CWS | 37

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Feature THE BENEFITS FOR THE ECONOMY

Landfill is cheap. Many have been inherited from past generations and don’t include the cost of replacement, rehabilitation and gas management in their pricing.

In addition, the organic matter itself helps bind soil and prevent erosion. Significant erosion prevention with the use of composts has been clearly demonstrated by Griffith University research where compost blankets reduced gully erosion in grazing lands by 90 percent.

Therefore, residents of coastal councils – simply by recycling better – will help close the loop by returning FOGO nutrients to Queensland soils, helping to prevent erosion and contributing to Reef protection.

Another benefit to the Reef will come through avoided landfill emissions. The 1.28 million tonnes of FOGO currently landfilled would typically generate greenhouse gas emissions of around 1.39 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) (assuming 40 percent food, 60 percent garden and a default gas capture rate of 30 percent in Queensland). Emissions from composting are a fraction of that. Therefore, aside from the fact that such emissions avoidance is equivalent to taking more than 250,000 cars off the road for a year, it also contributes to climate change mitigation, thereby helping to protect the Reef indirectly by reducing the chance of future coral bleaching events such as the one underway at the moment.

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Recycling is a prime source of new jobs creation, mostly blue/green collar jobs. It also generates more jobs than what would be created by landfi ll for managing the same amount of waste. But the key difference is that this waste is returned into the economy as resources. Back in 2009, Access Economics reported that for every 2.8 jobs in landfi ll, 9.2 jobs in recycling are created.

Assuming an average composting facility size of 60,000 tonnes, around 20 new facilities would need to be built to process the 1.28 million tonnes of FOGO potentially available.

In practice, a lot of the facilities would need to be smaller to cater for localised needs and therefore the total number of facilities to be built would be higher.

Nevertheless, sticking to the 60,000-tonne assumption, such a facility is generally expected to generate six jobs over the construction phase and 10 ongoing jobs.

Therefore, coastal Queensland would benefit from a minimum of 200 permanent jobs, all contributing to the productive economy.

During the construction phase, 120 more jobs are expected with local suppliers, and equipment manufacturers also stand to benefit. Other indirect economic benefits of these composting facilities would include: ■ reduction in farming costs for purchasing mineral fertilisers ■ reduction in expenditure on erosion control ■ landfi ll avoidance and preservation of landfi ll void (reducing the true cost of landfi ll, which we defi ned in 2015 as removing a tonne of FOGO, saves more than two cubic metres of landfi ll space) ■ energy and water savings and ■ non-monetised benefits: • reef preservation • fisheries, and • indirectly, tourism.

THE COST CONUNDRUM Given the job creation potential of recycling, why does landfi ll continue to be the de facto method of waste disposal for most of Queensland’s waste? First and foremost, the reason is simply cost.

Landfi ll is cheap. Many, especially local government owned, landfi lls have been inherited from past generations and don’t include the cost of replacement, rehabilitation and gas management in their pricing.

State governments are coming to the realisation that this needs to be remedied and this will push up landfi ll pricing via reform and true cost pricing. But what would FOGO composting cost?

To collect 1.28 million tonnes of FOGO, local councils would need to introduce a ‘green bin’ with weekly kerbside collections. Since food waste would no longer be in the red bin, that service would drop to a fortnightly collection. Currently, only one coastal Queensland council implements FOGO collections, while six more collect GO via kerbside bins (Table 3).

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

26/07/16 2:22 PM

Feature TABLE 3 KERBSIDE COLLECTION SYSTEMS IN COASTAL QUEENSLAND COUNCILS

Region

Cairns

Townsville

Mackay

Fitzroy

Wide Bay

South East QLD

Council

Red bin

Yellow bin

Cairns

✔

✔

Cassowary

✔

Yarrabah

✔

Charters Towers

✔

Burdekin

✔

✔

Townsville

✔

✔

Whitsunday

✔

Isaac

✔

✔

Mackay

✔

✔

Rockhampton

✔

✔

Woorabinda

✔

Banana

✔

Central Highlands

✔

Gladstone

✔

✔

Bundaberg

✔

✔

Cherbourg

✔

Fraser Coast

✔

✔

Gympie

✔

✔

North Burnett

✔

South Burnett

✔

43117_34-39_F runoff1.indd 39

FOGO bin

Household FOGO is a well-defined and relatively easy way to target the source of organic wastes. Moreover, government and the public have a significant say on local waste management and can therefore press local councils to implement meaningful change.

However, households are by no means the only source of FOGO locally. Following council-wide FOGO collections, the service can easily be offered to small- and mediumsized businesses such as restaurants, takeaways and greengrocers to maximise organics collection and fully utilise the new infrastructure.

Larger businesses such as supermarkets can also be targeted with the involvement of the waste management industry. Biosolids, farm and livestock waste such as manure can also be processed appropriately and be used as organic fertilisers and to help reduce soil erosion.

MRA has calculated that, for most coastal councils, the cost of providing regular FOGO collection through a kerbside green bin would be approximately $39 per household per year including both collection and processing costs.

This cost would be reduced even further if the FOGO processing infrastructure were subsidised by the government or the cost of landfi lling increases. A ‘willingness to pay’ study would determine if a quarter of a dollar per household per year is an acceptable price to pay for a contribution to Reef protection.

BATTLING THE SERIOUS THREATS

Brisbane

✔

✔

Gold Coast

✔

✔

Ipswich

✔

✔

Lockyer Valley

✔

✔

Logan

✔

✔

Moreton Bay

✔

✔

Redland

✔

✔

Scenic Rim

✔

✔

Somerset

✔

✔

Sunshine Coast

✔

✔

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

GO bin

Further sources of organics

When composted FOGO is applied to sugarcane farms, it can reduce the use of mineral nitrogen by 46 percent and phosphorous by 80 percent. It also has the potential to lead to a 50 percent reduction in run-off and potentially contain erosion by 90 percent. Since both nutrient and sediment loads entering the Great Barrier Reef Lagoon are serious threats, the use of FOGO generated compost could assist in providing a solution to both of these issues and contribute to Reef protection, while also contributing to climate change abatement through avoided landfi ll emissions.

A win for Reef protection, soil protection and reduction in waste to landfi ll. ■ Virginia Brunton is a principal consultant (organics), Dimitris Dimoliatis a principal consultant (Strategy and Policy) and Mike Ritchie a director of MRA Consulting Group.

ISSUE 3 | 2016 CWS | 39

26/07/16 2:22 PM

Case study

Unusable fruit and vegetables from Sydney markets are being turned into fuel, as BEN SULLIVAN explains.

A fruitful partnership

S

tepping into Australia’s largest food distribution centre, Sydney Markets, is like entering another world – brimming with myriad characters, colours, smells and boisterous vendors, trading from the wee hours of the morning.

It is a big family atmosphere where larger than life personalities collide with a large ambition: to make ‘their’ market the most sustainable one in the world.

The food market connects 20,000 growers Australia-wide with restaurants, cafés and greengrocers around Sydney, while also supplying fresh fruit and vegetables to over two-thirds of the Australian population. But from the 2.5

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million tonnes of produce to pass through the markets each year, there are 25,000 tonnes that end up as waste.

Over the past 10 years, Sydney Markets and Veolia have been working together to find a way to transform end-of-life waste into valuable resources like energy. Such collaboration also improves environmental challenges around paper, plastic and organic waste streams.

Since 2005, there have been astounding results: the amount of waste saved from landfill has improved from 17 percent to 65 percent, contributing to a recovery of 100,000 tonnes of waste, with an estimated saving of $18 million. It should

be noted that this figure includes all the waste stream contributors working with Veolia at Sydney Markets.

THE PROCESS Veolia has achieved these results with Sydney Markets through the on-site Green Point Facility, where waste is delivered to be sorted, separated and diverted into eight waste streams including organic, cardboard and paper, timber, steel, plastic, polystyrene, steel and concrete. This long-term partnership has helped Sydney Markets achieve optimal sustainability and financial outcomes.

Following the sorting process, the waste is transported to EarthPower Technologies,

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

26/07/16 11:26 AM

Case study

OVER 100 AUSTRALIAN COMPANIES HAVE GENOX RECYCLING EQUIPMENT INSTALLED. ARE YOU ONE OF THEM YET? Ideal for companies looking to achieve zero landfill Reliable, cost effective, environmentally friendly Australia’s favourite solution for all kinds of waste/materials reduction applications Extensive range available: – Vision Series – high quality, cost effective shredders – Gran-Calibur series granulator - defined size reduction of various materials in a single pass – High performance plastic washing and drying plants, complete tyre recycling plants, made-to-order solution for practically all recycling applications.

For more information: Call: 03 9706 8066 Email: sales@appliedmachinery.com.au Visit: www.appliedmachinery.com.au

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Case study

Australia’s first regional food waste-toenergy facility, located in Sydney’s west where unusable scraps are converted into energy by using anaerobic digestion technology.

In 2007, Veolia and Cleanaway acquired EarthPower in a joint venture. Over this period, the team has seen a growing incentive for proven resource recovery solutions in the face of increasing waste disposal levies, and a genuine desire from customers, including Sydney Markets, to sustainably manage all waste streams, with a particular focus on food organics.

The process at EarthPower uses bacteria to convert solid and liquid organic wastes into a biogas and a sludge that is dried to produce a high-nutrient organic fertiliser, as well as 1800 megawatt hours (Mwh) of electricity, enough to power 247 homes annually.

EarthPower is an example of resource recovery technology that utilises waste product in the generation of viable and much needed by-products such as green energy and compost.

This is not only about returning value to the marketplace, but also ensures that Sydney businesses and councils are provided with real options for recovering organic waste materials.

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Linking waste, water and energy Veolia launched a program recently with global sustainability agency Republic of Everyone to develop a creative platform to market the company’s integrated service capacity and scope across its three sustainable city environmental service areas: waste, water and energy.

The campaign came in response to Veolia’s client feedback – that the ability to have integrated environmental services was not properly understood, and is further reflected by the siloed nature of these services within organisations. As a result, one of the challenges clients face is difficulty in realising environmental performance targets.

Veolia asked the agency to communicate beyond explaining services, wanting it to demonstrate how Veolia can add value, and protect increasingly scarce natural resources, address the challenges of urbanisation and consumerism, show model development that supports growth and sustainability and also show how to switch clients

from resource consumption to the use-and-recover approach of the circular economy.

Essentially, Veolia wanted the wider business community to understand how it designs and implements solutions to help improve access to resources – with the aim of replicating natural systems to solve manmade problems. Veolia calls these solutions ‘plug-ins’, which are creating the next major change in this sector for our cities requiring essential services that can be, and are, truly integrated.

While the elements included collateral and case studies, the agency worked with Veolia on one of the marketing ‘hot spots’, gamification, creating the Integrated by Design game. It's an engagement touchscreen tool that showcases Veolia’s ‘plug-in’ services across a range of commercial and business sectors, in an interactive way.

The platform has been launched directly to market sectors, including heavy industries and large-scale food retail.

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

27/07/16 10:03 AM

A 42729_

Case study

The plant, capable of accepting a broad range of items, including fruit and vegetables, meat and fish, bakery and delicatessen goods, right through to grease trap and bulk packaged waste, was upgraded in 2013.

Many of these items are expensive to dispose of in other ways, so the EarthPower facility offers a unique and sustainable, and often more economical, alternative to landfill, while producing

minimal unutilised residual by-products and no harmful emissions.

The liquid food waste is converted into a combustible gas similar to natural gas. This is recovered and used to fuel cogeneration engines, which produce green electricity.

This electricity is sold into the grid for distribution to domestic, commercial and industrial clients. The upgrade increased EarthPower’s capacity to

accept an average of 1000 tonnes per week of food organics.

Sydney Markets has set itself a goal of becoming the greenest market in Australia and it has already achieved many awards that validate its efforts to create more sustainable operations with cooperation from tenants, employees and partners. ■

Ben Sullivan is the NSW general manager for Veolia.

THANKS TO GENOX THESE OLD TYRES WILL GO AROUND AGAIN. THAT’S APPLIED THINKING.

To date over 100 Australian organisations have selected the Genox brand for a reliable, cost effective and environmentally friendly solution for their waste reduction needs.

Genox fully automatic tyre recycling plants are the complete solution for your trye recycling needs. There is no need for manual debeading of tyres and ambient temperature processing reduces operational costs and minimises secondary pollution.

Plus the plants are extremely easy to operate and maintain.

For more information: Call: 03 9706 8066 Email: sales@appliedmachinery.com.au Visit: www.appliedmachinery.com.au

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26/07/16 11:27 AM

Feature: Innovation

CONNECTING THE LINKS The Internet of Things is unlocking the circular economy by changing the way we use resources and energy, as SANDY RODGER writes.

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Feature

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nfi nity can be a scary thought – something too large to imagine, an idea for scientists and crazy people. One of those crazy people was my boss.

When I was the engineer responsible for maintenance of a chemicals plant, he decided we would have a numbering system for every single item of equipment in the plant, and a database allowing us to track maintenance activity, parts and costs. This was in 1986, and such databases were just becoming available.

We had a lot of equipment in the plant – it felt like an infi nite number of items, impossible to deal with in a structured way. The idea of numbering them all seemed unbelievably daunting – and what could we do with all those numbers anyway?

The use of technology turned the infi nity problem into (just) a large one, and suddenly we could take a structured view of the plant’s equipment. This transformed the effectiveness of our maintenance.

I remember a conversation with a senior craftsman, who was praising a particular type of valve because it was so easy to repair. My boss pointed out that this was basically down to practice – the valves were highly unreliable and so the craftsmen were working on them every day! He had the data to prove it. So we switched to more reliable valves. We made thousands of such decisions because we had better data.

In the 30 years since, the crazy people have been busy. Now we have the emerging idea of the Internet of Things (IoT), where almost everything in our lives can carry information, and can be interconnected. Not

This connectivity allows smarter decisions – and in many cases that actually means better use of the physical assets around us. just expensive equipment in the professional context of a chemicals plant, but home appliances, cars and (before long) even such minor items as pieces of packaging.

And we have the devices in our pockets to access and use the data in a million different ways. Apple sells over 1.5 million apps, and a growing number of these are, in effect, a front-end for the IoT – calling a taxi, adjusting your heating, scanning a barcode to reorder groceries.

Like the valves in the chemicals plant, what this connectivity does is allow smarter decisions – and in many cases that actually means better use of the physical assets around us.

Taxi and car-sharing apps work because they use spare capacity in cars, and in the process that helps

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capacity of roads and parking spaces too. The barcode reordering allows you not to overstock on groceries.

A computer printer that re-orders cartridges and automatically arranges delivery, and collection of the old one, saves waste for both the user and the supplier.

So while apps are cool and fun, the reason why these ones are extra-cool is that they really do access some extra value. That means they make fi nancial sense and give lasting customer satisfaction.

This is why so-called ‘intelligent assets’ feature in a recent circular economy report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. This is the second report from the Foundation this year, both coming from its Project MainStream collaboration with McKinsey and the World Economic Forum.

This report takes a slice deep into our industrial world. It shows how connecting things helps them last longer and be better utilised, reused and ultimately recycled. It even shows how biological systems can be optimised using data rather than chemicals. It illustrates this with a set of case studies – real examples of where this is already working and adding value.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are moving fast to exploit these opportunities.

MainStream was set up to tackle the big stalemates preventing the implementation of the circular economy. This area is so dynamic that ‘stalemate’ may seem a strange word to use, but there are key enabling conditions that have to be met – data security, interoperability and flexible pricing models. Intelligent assets being so pervasive could mean they become intrusive, and lose trust. So there is the gritty work ahead of collaborating to set standards that both facilitate the systems and protect all the participants.

I’m left thinking that this is the 21st century version of common sense. Knowing the valve was unreliable brought an instant realisation that we should change it.

People don’t waste resources by choice, but often they lack the information to make a smart choice, or the opportunity to benefit from it. The circular economy is a great idea because basically it represents a set of common sense choices – intelligent assets shows how we can close the information gap and make many more of those choices. ■ Sandy Rodger is a UK-based engineer and business leader working with organisations on their transition to the circular economy.

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Feature INTELLIGENT ASSETS TRANSFORMS THE WAY WE MAKE, USE,AND AND REUSE STUFF BY...

...MONITORING PERFORMANCE DATA TRANSMITTED FROM PRODUCT TO MANUFACTURER

...EXTENDING THE ‘USE CYCLE’ • PARTS HARVESTING • REUSE • RECYCLING PARTS • OPTIMISED END OF SOLE USE

PARTS

...REDEFINING MAINTENANCE • PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE • PERFORMANCE CONTRACTS • UPDATES AND UPGRADES

...DESIGN DEVELOPMENT DATA INFORMS PRODUCT IMPROVEMENTS

...IMPROVED COMPONENTS AND PRODUCTS

SOURCE: Ellen MacArthur Foundation, World Economic Forum, Intelligent Assets: Unlocking the circular economy potential, (2016)

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Feature

Smart connections – the opportunities Where will the opportunities come from in greater uptake of digital technologies?

MICHELLE DUNNER reports.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation report ‘Intelligent Assets: Unlocking the Circular Economy Potential’ identifies opportunities for innovation and creativity across a spectrum of industries and sectors.

Prepared with global consulting firm McKinsey and Company as part of the Foundation’s Project MainStream, it touches on the profit centres where the circular economy and IoT (through smartconnected devices) may intersect, particularly in the area of logistics, but goes further to look at how business, cities and society could redefine their relationship with resources.

“A rapid increase in the number of intelligent assets is reshaping the economy, and this development will create significant value,” the report says. “The number of connected devices is expected to grow to 25 to 50 billion by 2020, from around 10 billion today. A growing body of research indicates this IoT offers a trillion-dollar opportunity, brought about by improved production and distribution processes and, perhaps more importantly, a significant shift in the way products are utilised.”

The report authors say there are four value drivers that help decouple economic value creation from resource consumption in a circular economy – extending the use cycle length of an asset, increasing utilisation of an asset or resource,

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looping or cascading an asset through additional use cycles, and regeneration of natural capital.

These can be combined with intelligent asset value drivers – knowledge of the location, condition and availability of an asset.

“In this systemic change perspective, IoT becomes the new, virtualised infrastructure that governs assets use and movements along the value chain,” the report says. “By breaking down structural barriers established over time between production and consumption or use, an IoT-enabled circular economy offers considerable opportunities for a multitude of sectors including manufacturing, energy and utilities, built environment and infrastructure, logistics and waste management, and agriculture and fishing.

“Both large incumbents and disruptive innovators are rethinking their models and value chains, indicating that the digital revolution is not a niche market but the underpinning of a new economy. With over 80 percent of global GDP (gross domestic product) generated in urban areas and multiple opportunities to optimise materials flows, cities are at the forefront of the upcoming transformation.”

The report authors interviewed a number of business leaders who remarked that, to take advantage of the impending digital transformation, companies need a shift towards more open source and collaborative data platforms, and deal with the data security and privacy issues.

“Addressing these challenges requires new rules of the game that will allow the fast-moving technology and market trends to evolve. Companies and policymakers would need a multi-stakeholder approach to create such conditions; if successful they could

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lay the groundwork for solving several of the core challenges for designing an economy that is truly restorative and regenerative,” concludes the report.

WHAT BUSINESS LEADERS ARE SAYING “The circular economy is an economic and environmental imperative, but there is a huge gap between a big concept and a practical reality. The Internet of Things is the ‘glue’ that links the trillions of items we consume each year globally, with the changes in everyday consumer behaviour, product recovery, material separation and remanufacturing that we need.” – Mike Barry, director, Plan A, Marks & Spencer “Information is at the heart of ensuring that businesses around the world can make the right decisions to eradicate waste and use resources effectively. The Internet of Things, with its smart sensors and connected technologies, can play a

key role in providing valuable data about things like energy use, underutilised assets and material flows to help make businesses more efficient. Their role in building a future with a more circular economy is critical and we are excited about the role technology will play in realising this vision.” – Kate Brandt, lead for Sustainability, Google Inc “Truly circular economies arguably cannot exist without the Internet of Things. No amount of clever design ensures a complex system will remain useful and efficient over time. To be sustainable, a system must be responsive; actions and behaviours must be connected via data and knowledge. With the embedding of intelligence in almost every object, we can imagine systems that adapt and respond to change in order to remain fit for purpose.” – Tim Brown chief executive officer, IDEO Source: ‘Intelligent Assets: Unlocking the Circular Economy Potential’.

INTERACTIONS OF CIRCULAR ECONOMY AND INTELLIGENT ASSET VALUE DRIVERS INTELLIGENT ASSET VALUE DRIVERS CIRCULAR ECONOMY VALUE DRIVERS

Knowledge of the location of the asset

Knowledge of the condition of the asset

Knowledge of the availability of the asset

Extending the use cycle length of an asset

Guided replacement service of broken component to extend asset use cycle

Predictive maintenance and replacement of failing components prior to asset failure

Improved product design from granular usage information

Optimised route planning to avoid vehicle wear

Increasing utilisation of an asset or resource

Looping/cascading an asset through additional use cycles

Regeneration of natural capital

Route planning to reduce driving time and improve utilisation rate

Changed use patterns to minimise wear

Minimised downtime through predictive maintenance

Swift localisation of shared assets

Precise use of input factors (e.g. fertiliser and pesticide) in agriculture

Enhanced reverse logistics planning

Predictive and effective remanufacturing

Automated localisation of durable goods and materials on secondary markets

Accurate asset valuation by comparison with other assets

Automated distribution system of biological nutrients

Immediate identification of signs of land degradation

Automated location tracking of natural capital, such as fish stocks or endangered animals

Automated condition assessment, such as fish shoal size, forest productivity, or coral reef health

Accurate decision-making for future loops (e.g. remanufacture versus recycle)

Optimised sizing, supply, and maintenance in energy systems from detailed use patterns Automated connection of available, shared asset with next user Transparency of available space (e.g. parking) to reduce waste (e.g. congestion) Improved recovery and reuse/ repurposing of assets that are no longer in use Digital marketplace for locally supplied secondary materials

Source: ‘Intelligent Assets: Unlocking the Circular Economy Potential’.

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Case study

Can Australia afford cheap furniture?

TONY ROGERS reports.

The true cost of furniture

T

here is a general conception that furniture similar in appearance, is of equal quality and sustainability, but this is far from the case. Unfortunately, most consumers only look at the initial cost of an item, without any appreciation of its total life cycle cost, or the impact on our environment.

Many furniture items being purchased today contain volatile compounds or carcinogens. These put people today, as well as future generations, at risk. Inferior and hazardous products continue to infiltrate the market and that’s because it’s easy and cheaper for companies to import products that don’t comply with Australian standards.

While organisations such as the Australian Furniture Association (AFA) and the Australasian Furnishing Development and Research Institute (AFRDI) are working tirelessly to implement and develop standards, legislative support is needed. It’s become nearly impossible for the industry to self-regulate.

We’ve already seen the start of government action – Queensland and Western Australia have introduced some mandated supply arrangements. Essentially, products going into government schools must be manufactured to meet Australian standards, which include achieving environmental certification. Other states and territories so far have been reluctant to follow.

We believe the mandating of standards within the procurement process would not only provide better value for money over the life cycle of the product, it would also provide more opportunities for local manufacturers, greater protection for consumers and, more importantly, a more sustainable world for future generations.

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SUSTAINABLE LOCAL MANUFACTURING While we are committed to Australian manufacturing, and have been since 1953, many of our competitors have chosen to use imports as the key source of their furniture supplies. We prefer to procure raw materials from other Australian manufacturers, ensuring we are creating our products in a sustainable manner.

By investing in CNC (computer numeric control) machinery such as steel tube benders, a laser cutter, robotic welders and woodworking equipment, we have the technology to produce most of our components in-house, but we’ve gone further – adopting solar power in our factories, harvesting rainwater, and keeping waste minimisation, resource conservation, recycling and sustainable manufacturing decisions and processes uppermost in our minds.

So, what does best practice look like in terms of minimising the furniture industry’s impact on the environment?

I’m proud to outline what we’re doing at Woods Furniture.

ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICES We try to reduce our manufacturing footprint through: ■ adopting waste emission minimisation, resource conservation, recycling and sustainable development through the manufacturing process and selection of raw material ■ strictly observing all statutory and company regulations ■ educating all employees on the environmental implications of their actions ■ continually monitoring and updating appropriate technology in relation to environmental management

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Case study

While organisations such as the AFA and the AFRDI are working tirelessly to implement and develop standards, legislative support is needed. It’s become nearly impossible for the industry to self-regulate.

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How green is your furniture?

Sustainability is a broad concept, but in the context of furniture manufacturing it includes the ethical sourcing of raw materials, responsible use of water and energy, waste minimisation and, through better furniture design, the efficient use of raw materials – by extending a product’s working life and its recyclability.

Australian Furniture Association chief executive Patrizia Torelli says her organisation enthusiastically embraces the concept of sustainability.

“Through our support and partnership of Furntech-AFRDI’s furniture sustainability standard, and our collective implementation of in-house policies and practices that mitigate our own environmental impacts, we hope to demonstrate some leadership around this very important issue,” she says.

“Sustainable practices are fundamental to the future of our industry and to the environment, and a number of our members can demonstrate very real product stewardship and endof-life programs, including buyback initiatives. We strongly encourage our members to adopt such programs as the AFRDI Green Tick Product Certification, a cost-effective certification that adds great value to

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the final product, especially in the use of commercial, educational and aged care furniture.”

WHAT DOES THE AFRDI GREEN TICK MEAN? AFRDI chief executive Bob Panitzki says adopting sustainability as a working philosophy is practical, especially for commercial furniture manufacturers.

“More and more they must conform to ‘green’ specifications and tender requirements in both the commercial and government sectors,” he says.

“Non-compliance means that, in time, they may potentially be excluded from much of the marketplace.

“As a way to address these concerns Furntech-AFRDI developed a sustainability certification program solely for the furniture industry known as AFRDI Green Tick, and therein lies special credibility. AFRDI Green Tick Certification confirms to purchasers, specifiers, architects, builders and designers that a piece of furniture meets a robust yet realistic level of sustainability requirements,” says Panitzki.

To be awarded AFRDI Green Tick Certification a product must be shown to meet the requirements of AFRDI Standard 150:2012 Sustainability Standard – Commercial Furniture at either the Silver, Gold or Platinum

Level. Since AFRDI 150 incorporates the use of a points-based assessment there is some choice as to what requirements a product must be shown to meet. However, there are still base level (mandatory) requirements that all products must meet regardless of the level they wish to achieve.

AFRDI Green Tick is a Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) recognised product certification scheme. AFRDI 150’s three levels of certification are recognised by the GBCA: ■ AFRDI Green Tick Level C/Silver –

GBCA Level B recognition ■ AFRDI Green Tick Level B/Gold –

GBCA Level A recognition, and ■ AFRDI Green Tick Level A/Platinum –

GBCA Level A recognition.

“The AFRDI Green Tick certified product is also deemed compliant with the Volatile Organic Compounds and Formaldehyde Minimisation credits in Green Star rating tools,” Panitzki says. “Furthermore, Green Star New Zealand recognises and rewards the specification and inclusion of AFRDI Green Tick certified products through specific Materials Credits,” says Panitzki.

“Furniture manufacturers can assess whether their products meet the requirements of AFRDI 150 in a free assessment questionnaire, available on request from AFRDI.”

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Case study ■ ensuring all parts used in the manufacture of our furniture can be disassembled and used in the recycling process ■ installing a 100-kilowatt (Kw) solar panel system that contributes around a third of our production facility’s daily power requirements, and exports excess power back into the grid on weekends and nonproduction days ■ installing four 10,000-litre tanks to harvest rainwater from the roof of our production facility and eliminate the need to use potable water in our powdercoating plant ■ emphasising the vital importance of timber sourcing – we select MDF (medium-density fibreboard) and decorated MDF products from suppliers with documented sustainable forest practices such as Laminex Industries (our standard board and decorated board is derived from 60 percent pre-consumer recycled and 40 percent reclaimed silver culture; the board products used are rated at E0), and ■ powder-coating our steel in-house – it is regularly and independently tested for compliance to EPA (Environment

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“A number of our members can demonstrate very real product stewardship and end-of-life programs, including buyback initiatives.”

– Patrizia Torelli, AFA chief executive.

SO WHAT SHOULD CONSUMERS LOOK FOR?

targeted for educational use, we go further to ensure our products are VOC (volatile organic compound) Emissions Certified and contain no volatile compounds or carcinogens that cause chronic irritation to children.

Look for products designed and manufactured to the highest Australian standard. For example, AS/NZS 4610 is currently the highest quality standard for classroom furniture.

Investigate the manufacturer – do they implement best practice across their operations? We achieved the ISO 9901 accreditation, which ensures we maintain a consistent level of service and product delivery throughout the company. ■

Green Certification gives customers the confidence that their furniture products meet environmental, human health and ethical impact criteria. Because our range is

Tony Rogers is the director of Woods Furniture, vice chairman of the AFA and non-executive director of AFRDI.

Protection Authority) regulations for discharge into the water cycle; the powder used in this process is TGIC (Triglycidylisocyanurate) free.

All steel and plastic parts used in our manufacturing process can be separated and sent for recycling at the end of the product life span.

We strategically select supply partners situated close to our production facility and use only Australian-made steel to ensure a significant reduction in our carbon footprint through decreased need to transport materials.

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Feature: Property

Targets or outcomes: which are we pursuing?

We’re setting targets, goals and commitments to achieve zero waste, but do they always lead to better outcomes? PATRICK ARNOLD and SCOTT EBSARY report.

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26/07/16 2:33 PM

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Feature

W

here we once read in textbooks about how a concept called ‘globalisation’ would change the way business was conducted around the world, we now fi nd ourselves taking for granted the conveniences and opportunities afforded by the global economy.

Large and small businesses alike have the ability to tap into global consumer and labour markets, serving to dilute the regional barriers that once separated us and provide businesses with easy access to the most competitive material and labour resources available.

The outcomes of this contemporary business environment are many – some are positive, while others are not. As far as it is possible within the limitations of this article, we will attempt to unpack some of the outcomes of the global economy as they relate to waste management broadly and, more specifically, how they relate to the waste management considerations facing the property sector.

WASTE ACCOUNTABILITY In the same way that corporations have taken advantage of the cheap material and labour resources of developing economies to produce products destined to be consumed on the other side of the world, the consumer-driven markets of the developed world are now looking at the other side of the equation.

They’re increasingly seeking cheaper, ‘more efficient’ solutions to dispose of and recycle the waste generated from their societies – much of which ends up in the same developing economies from which the products originated in the fi rst place.

This practice has been prevalent in the e-waste (electronic waste) sector for some time whereby broken or obsolete electronics are shipped to developing countries where cheap labour allows these products to be dematerialised into their base components at a fraction of the cost associated with conducting this service in a developed country.

At its best, and when conducted with integrity, this practice would create new revenue streams and give rise to potential foreign investment into economies in need of growth. At its worst, a lack of transparency and accountability throughout the chain of custody has resulted in severe environmental and social abuses.

While the e-waste example possibly exhibits the most extreme and severely negative outcomes, the factors that created these outcomes are still relevant when considering the broader implications for the increased reliance on offshore disposal and recycling in the name of ‘efficiency’.

As a starting point, we offer some points worthy of consideration for any company or organisation that should at the very least understand where and how their waste and recyclables are being disposed of processed: ■ taking advantage of a cheap labour force where work, health and safety, and environmental regulations may not be as stringent as the host country and

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“In a saturated marketplace where businesses are selling similar products and services, the public perception of a business is vitally important.” indeed may not align with the stated CSR (corporate social responsibility) policies of the company ■ lack of transparency in determining fi nal disposal point or recycling outcome ■ unregulated disposal of materials into landfi lls ■ direct environmental and health issues for the local communities that manage the waste ■ loss of valuable environmental resources from our local economy, and ■ substantial increase in waste miles for fi nal disposal.

As organisations grow their sphere of influence, they are increasingly held to a higher level of responsibility and accountability for their actions (or inactions). In this contemporary context greater transparency is being demanded by consumers, business stakeholders and governments to ensure accountability.

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Feature

The ethos of sustainability, while still relatively young in the corporate world, is now becoming openly adopted by organisations, as the reliance solely on economic performance is no longer enough to compete in the global marketplace. In a saturated marketplace where businesses are selling similar products and services, the public perception of a business is vitally important.

That is why the adoption of social and environmental responsibility now carries weight and can prove to be the tipping point of consumer/investor buy-in and, as a consequence, a contributor to business success.

As a result, in the interests of responding to the contemporary business concept of the triple bottom line, publicly reported recycling targets and commitments to achieve ‘zero waste’ can be made without considering the implications involved in actually delivering on these goals with a satisfactory level of integrity, accountability and accuracy.

Certainly, we should welcome any and all drivers that may motivate corporations to take steps to improve

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recycling performance and increase diversion from landfi ll; however, to be clear, the impetus to deliver improved sustainability figures, does not necessarily equate to improved environmental outcomes.

ZERO WASTE: WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN? Let’s consider the concept of zero waste. Increasingly, within the property sector, we are starting to see the corporate adoption of zero waste strategies. Many of these are targeted solely towards zero-waste-to-landfi ll and thus provide a linear progression of achievement: achieving a 100 percent recycling rate will equate to zero waste, which must translate to positive environmental, social and corporate governance outcomes.

With the current technology and waste management systems available to the property sector within our society, it is hard to imagine this goal is actually possible – does this mean we have set the bar too high?

A true zero waste commitment is defi ned by the Zero Waste International Alliance as follows: “… a goal that is ethical, economical, efficient and visionary, to guide people in changing their lifestyles

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Feature and practices to emulate sustainable natural cycles, where all discarded materials are designed to become resources for others to use. Zero waste means designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury them.�

The resonating point in the above defi nition is that zero waste extends much further than simply ensuring no waste goes to landfi ll. It demonstrates a need to rethink how we operate our current systems and understand our sphere of influence to plug the holes in the resource pipeline and improve efficiency in a responsible way.

Organisations are required to think about how they are able to work with the entire supply chain to achieve extended producer responsibility and accountability to ensure that a commitment like zero waste (as per the true defi nition) is actually achieved.

INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP

defi ne how their zero waste commitment will take shape in practice.

It should now be clear that purely diverting all materials away from landfi ll without regard for the various implications of that decision does not constitute a responsible strategy to achieve a true zero waste commitment.

The pathways an organisation takes to achieve its outcomes and not the outcome itself is critical for corporate organisations.

When an organisation elevates itself to a position of leadership within the industry by committing to lofty goals, it is only natural for other organisations to want to follow suit.

If it is later discovered that the methods taken to achieve a given outcome are unethical or undesirable, then the value of the achievement will be questioned, as will the reputation of the organisation. Striving towards greater responsibility and accountability to achieve truly beneficial outcomes should be the key to industry leadership.

Property groups fi nd themselves in a unique position of influence over a broad number of stakeholders both up (tenants) and down (waste contractors) the supply chain. Influence may vary between each asset or property group, so it is up to the organisation to

So how can we do things better? As stated earlier, at the very least we must understand and consider the various implications associated with

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ETHICAL WASTE MANAGEMENT

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Feature our waste management decisions. Again, we offer some points for consideration: ■ You get what you pay for. Beware of waste management ‘solutions’ that claim to deliver on your corporate sustainability goals at a fraction of the cost of previous services and/or accepted market value.

Transparency and meaningful outcomes rarely come without a cost.

■ Duty of care. A business should know where its waste and recycling is going. Understanding the destination and processing facility is a powerful tool in driving a recycling program, as this enables us to understand the actual downstream outcomes to better inform our upstream decisions.

■ Extended producer responsibility. This is a strategy to make producers fi nancially and environmentally accountable to product end-of-life. This is becoming more commonplace in the e-waste sector; however, the same principles can apply for the property sector.

Most properties are multi-tenanted and generally share waste costs evenly. Some tenants produce significantly more waste than other tenants. Any strategy or system that is able to pass these costs on directly in an accurate manner shifts accountability to the true waste producer.

“Zero Waste demonstrates a need to rethink how we operate our current systems and understand our sphere of influence to plug the holes in the resource pipeline and improve efficiency in a responsible way.”

■ Creating frameworks. Organise ways within your property environment that enables other organisations (tenants) to do things better.

Something as simple as providing a recycling bin service and making sure this is available in their tenancy goes a long way.

■ Utilising consultation. Consult industry best practice such as the Better Buildings Partnership ‘Operational Waste Guidelines’ (the Better Buildings Partnership is a leading collaboration of 14 of Australia’s largest property owners, managers and key influencers, which plays a key role in improving the performance and sustainability of existing buildings in the City of Sydney area and across Australia).

In summary, there is a need to look deeper to evaluate the impacts of our waste goals. Are we accountable enough? When we take a local view, are we losing valuable resources that could be reused? Or, are we merely exporting the problem or creating a set of unintended consequences for other communities along the way?

Our decisions have implications not only for today, but potentially for the long-term. We need to ensure we’re on the right path. ■ Patrick Arnold and Scott Ebsary, Foresight Environmental.

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Best practice at Harvard In the US, Harvard’s facilities maintenance operations team put out this policy and guidelines checklist in 2014 for achieving zero waste in its buildings: ■ Make recycling and composting as easy as trash disposal. Wherever there is a trash receptacle, there are recycling and composting receptacles.

■ Maintain and post clear rules for recycling, compost and trash.

■ Operate thrifty buildings. In a well-run building, occupants recycle all papers, boxes, bottles and cans; custodians use up paper towels in the jumbo or wagon wheel dispensers; tradesmen recycle all waste from maintenance work; landscapers compost trimmings and incorporate food scrap composts into campus soils. Caterers are issued with specific instructions for donating unserved food, as well as supplying compostable containers, plates and utensils. Building accommodations make it easy for occupants to refill water bottles and wash their own mugs, cups and service ware.

■ Form and support a local green team. Engage the help of the building’s recycling services to identify and support a local team of engaged occupants to help encourage behaviours necessary to achieve zero waste. These teams can also help conduct waste audits, organise sharing events for building occupants, build a positive community culture, save budgets and help the environment.

■ Audit and report results. Plan and coordinate an annual waste audit to see how much of your building’s trash stream could have been recycled, reused or composted. Publicise the results to all building occupants and make adjustments to building policies and procedures accordingly.

■ Ingrain the goal of zero waste. Convey to all occupants that we need to get full value from all our materials, which includes the need to refurbish, remanufacture, repair and reuse whenever possible.

■ Publicise the goal (and progress reports). Do this through building postings, new employee/ student orientations, announcements at group meetings and gatherings, and contracts with vendors for goods and services. Regularly spotlight significant events, progress or other noteworthy achievements that support waste reduction efforts.

■ Train and retrain occupants. Since occupant populations at Harvard (students, staff and faculty) are continual turning over, refresh and keep pertinent the message of waste reduction, reuse and recycling, as well as related buildingspecific protocols.

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The transport sector is one of Australia’s fastest growing sources of emissions. Uptake of electric vehicles, when linked to a cleaner supply of electricity, has the potential to provide reductions in the Passenger and Light Commercial Vehicle segments.

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Feature: Best practice

Driving the right outcomes With the rise of electric vehicles, SHAILESH TYAGI looks at battery waste and current trends for effective management of the end-of-life environmental impacts.

T

he global presence of electric vehicles continues to increase. According to the International Energy Agency, the global threshold of one million electric cars on the road was exceeded in 2015, closing at 1.26 million.

Ambitious targets and policy support have contributed to lower vehicle costs, extended vehicle ranges and reduced consumer barriers in a number of countries.

During 2015, the market share for electric vehicles reached 23 percent in Norway and nearly 10 percent in the Netherlands. China’s growing electric car sales in 2015 made it the main market worldwide, ahead of the US for the first time. China is also home to the strongest global deployment of e-scooters and electric buses.

UPTAKE OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES IN AUSTRALIA From an Australian perspective, electric vehicle sales have been considerably slower to date, with Australian sales in 2014 equating to 948, representing approximately 0.32 percent of the 2014 global electric vehicle market. Of the approximately 1.08 million new

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vehicles sold in the Australian market during 2014, the proportion relating to electric vehicles represents less than 0.09 percent.

Despite this slow start, the uptake of electric vehicles in Australia, when linked to a cleaner supply of electricity, has been recognised as having the potential to provide emission reductions of 16 percent and 47 percent in the Passenger and Light Commercial Vehicle segments by 2050.

This will impact one of Australia’s fastest growing sources of emissions – the transport sector, which currently represents 17 percent of Australia’s emissions and is projected to rise by a further six percent by 2020, reaching 96 Mt CO2-e (million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent). A greater uptake of electric vehicles is also seen as having the potential to address Australia’s current fuel security issues, due to Australia’s high fuel import dependency.

As a consequence, we are likely to see increased measures driven by government targeted at both the demand and supply sides to support an increased uptake of electric vehicles in Australia.

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Feature ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS ASSOCIATED WITH END-OF-LIFE ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERIES Despite the emissions-reduction benefits associated with electric vehicles sales, there are growing concerns regarding the environmental impacts of end-of-life batteries from electric vehicles.

While sealed electric vehicle batteries – typically comprising nickel metal hydride (‘NiMH’) or lithiumion (‘Li-ion’) – pose limited risk to the environment and human health, exposed batteries and the release of their contents to the atmosphere, such as when dumped in landfi lls, can have serious environmental impacts.

Key concerns relating to lithium and lithium compounds include:

■ Environmental impacts: elemental (metallic lithium) is easily oxidised in strongly exothermic reactions. Reaction with water is particularly dangerous because of simultaneous heat development and formation of hydrogen gas, which can result in explosion or fi re.

■ Occupational health impacts: elemental lithium causes severe eye and skin burns.

Industrial exposures to lithium may occur during extraction of lithium from ores, preparation of various lithium compounds, welding, brazing, enamelling and the use of lithium hydrides ■ Human health impacts: lithium affects the nervous system.

As the volume of electric vehicle battery waste continues to grow significantly over the coming decades, it’s expected that recycling opportunities in this market will continue to expand.

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Feature CURRENT APPROACHES TO END-OF-LIFE ELECTRIC VEHICLE BATTERY MANAGEMENT In response to the increasing quantities of end-oflife electric vehicle batteries and recognition of the importance of appropriately managing the potential environmental impacts from this waste, an increasing number of recycling initiatives are emerging. Examples of these initiatives include: ■ Recognising the importance of having a welldeveloped recycling program in place for lithium-ion batteries, Tesla Motors has entered into a series of partnerships with technology and recycling companies, primarily in North America and Europe to date, to enable a closed loop recycling program for used batteries. Companies such as Umicore are able

to recycle the old batteries into completely reusable materials and, as a result, substantially reduce the carbon footprint of manufacturing the lithium-ion batteries. For example, the cobalt in the batteries is used to make up lithium cobalt oxide that is resold to battery manufacturers. As Tesla’s electric vehicle range continues to expand globally, we are likely to see a similar expansion of its closed loop recycling programs into these markets as it looks to balance this growth with environmentally responsible activities.

■ Large auto manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda are establishing reverse supply chains to ensure that end-of-life EDV (electric drive vehicle) batteries are recovered and properly recycled.

The North American strategy The Commission for Environmental Cooperation published a report last year looking at end-of-life management for EDV batteries.

Here are some facts and figures on the extent of the issue in North America; all EDV batteries have long lifespans (eight years or longer) and manufacturer warranties (eight years or 100,000 to 150,000 miles, depending on the make and model of the vehicle).

Failure rates for EDV batteries are reported to be low (about one percent). The number of EDV batteries at end-of-life in North America was estimated at 115,000 units in 2013. This value is expected to reach about 380,000 units by 2020, 849,000 units by 2025 and almost 1.5 million units by 2030.

The constituents of EDV batteries (mostly nickel from NiMH batteries and cobalt from Li-ion batteries) provide an economic incentive for recycling at this time. Battery designs are changing so that they contain less valuable materials; this is a concern for the economics of future recycling efforts.

■ Companies already in the battery recycling business are extending their operations to include the processing of large-format NiMH and Li-ion batteries as long as they are broken down to smaller components. The constituents of electric vehicle batteries (mostly nickel from NiMH batteries and cobalt from Li-ion batteries) provide an economic incentive for recycling.

■ Companies with smelting operations are also interested in recycling electric vehicle batteries due to of their metal content.

It is recognised that the recycling and processing infrastructure for electric vehicle batteries is still in its infancy. However, with the volume of electric vehicle battery waste continuing to grow significantly over the coming decades, it’s expected that recycling opportunities in this market will continue to expand. Likewise, we are also likely to see best practice management of the associated environmental issues associated with the end-of-life management of these batteries to improve and become increasingly standardised. ■ Shailesh Tyagi is a partner at Deloitte Sustainability Services.

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Feature: Closing the loop

ENERGY FROM WASTE – GETTING IT OFF THE GROUND Six such facilities are currently proposed around the country, but Australia is yet to see an Energy from Waste (EfW) facility become shovel ready. Earlier this year, global resource management firm SUEZ convened a panel of experts at Australia’s leading waste management conference Waste 2016 to explore why.

I

t has only been in the last 20 years that Australia’s priority, as a country, has transitioned from waste management to resource recovery. Australia has historically had plentiful landfi ll capacity, but with increasing urban density and populations, landfi ll airspace in cities such as Sydney is rapidly reducing.

At the same time, communities are increasingly looking for ways to put their waste to good use and divert waste from landfi ll. In Western Australia, Perth is Australia’s fastest growing capital city and the state government has introduced ambitious waste diversion targets. In Victoria, it’s unlikely that any new landfi lls will be permitted in the metropolitan area under the state’s waste infrastructure plan.

This all adds up to a clear opportunity to bring EfW technology to Australia. EfW facilities are commonplace across Europe and the US, as well as in Asian countries such as Japan, China and Singapore.

Joyanne Manning, associate principal, Planning and Management at Arup, says Australia has a huge advantage as it moves into EfW because we have the ability to learn from global experiences, and bring those experts to Australia.

“Europe is 20 years in front of Australia, so we can look to the proven and ready access to data from the plants there,” says Manning. She also notes that the markets where EfW is commonplace are now overly saturated and this makes Australia an appealing place to turn to.

A HOLISTIC APPROACH During the panel discussion at Waste 2016, Dr Chindarat Taylor, founder and director, Resource Efficiency Pathway, UK and Thailand, highlighted that there are many EfW projects in the pipeline right across the world, but only a fraction of proposals are successful as they use a holistic approach to drive their proposal.

“There are four interdependent factors that make up the holistic approach to a successful project: technical, political, regulatory and economical.”

In order to make a project appealing, there needs to be stable and clear government policy and regulations in order to gain the confidence and momentum for long-term investment. “The business case and return on investment needs to be solid in order to stack up and create the basis for a successful project,” said Taylor.

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The panel agreed that companies proposing a development also need to have a good track record and proven success in delivering EfW projects. Validity of global credibility and expertise is crucial when introducing a new technology in a new market.

THE MAJOR CHALLENGE The most challenging part of an EfW proposal is securing the feedstock and supply of waste for infrastructure of this size. Companies need to effectively pitch the benefits of EfW technology to a local market, subsequently locking in the needed tonnages to get a facility off the ground.

Without the volumes of waste, the project is unlikely to receive the fi nancial backing it requires to be built.

Simon Currie, global head of energy, Norton Rose Fulbright, proposed building smaller plants as part of a broader energy resource recovery park. He said having an EfW facility as part of the life cycle of waste supports the circular economy and would cement energy recovery’s place in Australia’s waste hierarchy.

Currie said EfW is more than just a new solution to Australia’s waste-space problem.

“The resource boom is over,” he said. Acknowledging that investment banks and superannuation funds are jumping on board with fi nancing green projects, promoting sustainability in Australia, Currie said debt is the cheapest it has ever been in Australia for projects of this size.

taking the red bin directly to an EfW facility, as is the case in Europe. The more supportive EfW regulations in WA is perhaps why there are currently more projects there than in any other state.

Brian Callander, CEO of Mindarie Regional Council, started scoping the idea of building an EfW facility as a means to achieving WA’s ambitious waste target of 65 percent diversion by 2020.

Callander explained that as part of the waste audit conducted to scope the future waste infrastructure for the Council, they wanted to ensure the right steps were in place from the beginning, with their biggest priority being community engagement.

The circular economy is here. We need to refocus the discussion from an alternative waste disposal facility to a guaranteed source of clean energy that closes the loop and redefines the waste hierarchy.

“We want to make sure the community has the ability to be well-informed before it starts making decisions on whether an EfW plant is good, bad or indifferent,” he said.

JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS

COMMUNITY UNDERSTANDING AND CONSULTATION ARE CRUCIAL

SUEZ has been involved in more than 60 EfW projects around the world and is actively scoping opportunities in Australia.

SUEZ, executive director – Development, Performance and Innovation, Emmanuel Vivant, said the current policy statement laid out by the New South Wales Environmental Protection Agency (NSW EPA) is very restrictive.

“To underwrite an EfW facility we need significant long-term contracts and partnerships that are at least 20 to 25 years with significant feedstock. There is currently no appeal, or way to directly contract a NSW local council directly to an EfW facility.”

This is because, under the current NSW regulations, municipal solid waste found in Sydney’s red bins needs to be pre-processed in an Advanced Resource Recovery Technology facility, for example, with only the residual waste then able to go on to be treated at an EfW facility.

Henry Moore, NSW EPA waste manager, acknowledged there may be an issue with the current NSW policy reflecting the existing waste hierarchy, rather than the alternative, which includes energy recovery.

“Energy recovery is viewed as something that should be done to the residual waste faction prior to landfi ll.

More priority should be placed on reuse, recycle and avoidance around resource recovery before energy recovery comes into the mix,” Moore said.

In comparison, Western Australia is focusing on

NSW’s last incinerator closed in the mid-1990s due to community outcry. Moore suggested this was because of a lack of education and awareness about what an EfW facility actually did.

The panel agreed that significant engagement with communities needs to occur early on in the proposal stages of an EfW facility development. Without taking the community on the journey, private enterprise will always face the harsh attitudes of ‘not in my backyard’.

The complete opposite could be seen in Europe, with local communities in Denmark having campaigned for an EfW facility to be built in their community. This facility then guaranteed cheaper energy and, more specifically, hot water all year round.

Vivant suggested that Australia needs to focus on the future of EfW instead of comparing how this technology has been used in the past. He said technology has changed dramatically since the 1990s.

“The circular economy is here,” he said. “We need to refocus the discussion from an alternative waste disposal facility to a guaranteed source of clean energy that closes the loop and redefi nes the waste hierarchy.”

Looking forward, there is an appetite in the community to change its attitude towards waste recovery; it just requires consultation.

Moore highlighted that there is always more the regulator can do and that the NSW EPA “will engage, have been engaged and [will] continue to be engaged in the community as part of the EfW dialogue”. ■

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Government round-up

Events

A wrap-up of international, national and state initiatives impacting waste management and resource recovery.

NSW WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP LUNCH

QUEENSLAND Container deposit scheme announced Queensland Minister for the Environment Dr Steven Miles has announced the state will implement a container deposit scheme, starting in 2018.

Miles also said talks had commenced with New South Wales about setting up a singlescheme administrator. “We want a seamless system that’s good for the environment and friendly for business. A single administrator could cover both states to deliver the highest level of efficiency and effectiveness.”

The Waste Management Association of Australia has welcomed the move. Chief executive Martin Tolar says it is another step towards a national approach to litter and resource recovery.

“This is the start of a truly national approach to a Container Deposit Scheme and sends a clear message to other jurisdictions who are yet to consider a CDS,” Tolar says.

INTERNATIONAL ISWA calls for investment to drive global clean-up The International Solid Waste Association (ISWA) has reported annual global waste generation between seven and 10 billion tonnes, of which around two billion tones can be categorised as municipal solid waste. It highlights that countries with mature waste management systems and infrastructure are facing difficulties.

“To develop and build up functional waste management infrastructure, financing, especially in developing countries must become an international priority. Just to cover collection of waste, the World Bank estimates the gap to be US$40 billion per year, which will treble in the next 15 years.”

SOUTH AUSTRALIA Landfill levies on the way up South Australian State Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis has flagged landfill levies over $100 a tonne by 2020, resulting in a $64 million improvement to the state’s bottom line.

The present levy of $62 a tonne will rise to $103 by 2020. Much of the money raised is projected to be put back into waste industry development, resulting in a job creation program, but industry leaders have expressed disappointment in the level of reinvestment.

VICTORIA Second tyre licence awarded by EPA National tyre shredding company Tyrecycle has been granted a licence to store up to 80,000 tyres on its Somerton site, by Victoria’s EPA (Environment Protection Authority).

This is only the second such licence to be granted in Victoria since the EPA introduced new tyre stockpile regulations.

“The State Government put these regulations in place to ensure the Victorian public is better protected from the risk of tyre fires from unsafe stockpiles,” chief executive Nial Finegan says. “The regulations require premises that store more than 40 tonnes or 5000 waste tyres to obtain a licence from EPA.” Finegan says the number of used or waste tyres generated in Victoria each year is growing; about six million waste passenger car tyres were unaccounted for in Victoria in 2012/13, believed to be stockpiled or illegally dumped.

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Women driving change in the waste management industry is the focus of a Leadership Lunch run by WMAA (Waste Management Association of Australia). It follows a similar event held in Melbourne earlier this year and aims to break down barriers and create new career prospects.

When: 6 September Where: Four Seasons Hotel, Sydney, NSW More information: www.wmaa.asn.au

WASTE & RECYCLE 2016 CONFERENCE One of Western Australia’s major waste and recycling industry events, this attracts a wide cross-section of stakeholders, including community, government and business leaders.

When: 14-16 September Where: Esplanade Hotel by Rydges, Fremantle, WA More information: www.wasteandrecycle.net.au

ISWA 2016 WORLD CONGRESS Topics at this year’s International Solid Waste Association conference include the circular economy, managing healthcare waste, low cost bio-waste treatment and mining waste management.

The conference attracts a global audience of policy-makers and industry innovators.

When: 19-21 September Where: Novi Sad, Serbia More information: www.iswa2016.org

WASTE SOUTH AUSTRALIA CONFERENCE 2016 Delegates can attend a one-day conference focusing on investment, infrastructure and innovation in waste management, with an optional day two technical tour or targeted workshops.

When: 22-23 September Where: Stamford Grand Adelaide Hotel, SA More information: www.wmaa.asn.au

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