Inside Waste Oct/Nov 2021 by Prime Creative Media

www.insidewaste.com.au

ISSUE 104 | OCT/NOV 2021

INSIDE 24 Right to Repair 34 Metal Recycling 38 Waste Innovation

Is 80 per cent diversion possible?

Show us the money for the investment would be the aforementioned landfill levies. After all, many understood that that was one of the main reasons the levies were introduced for in the first place. Currently, it seems that the vast majority is going to the NSW government’s consolidated funds. According to a 2020 NSW Auditor General’s report, the state government has collected almost $4 billion in waste levies in the previous five years. Of the $751 million raised in 2018-19, two thirds of the monies went to areas outside the waste industry according to the report. If the government does want investment in the sector, industry players told Inside Waste that not only is there an expectation that levy money will go towards said investment, it will give a signal to investors on where the government stands so they can make sound, informed investment decisions. “One of the things I would have expected from the document was a review of the landfill levy; to say where the levy is going over the

next five to 10 years so that people can make their investment decisions today,” MRA Consulting’s Mike Ritchie told Inside Waste. “I think that is a missed opportunity – the government is committed to doing it, but I would have liked to see it as part of the 20-year plan.” While Helen Sloan, the acting general manager from the Southern Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (SSROC) wasn’t as direct as Ritchie, she did give a hint as to where the organisation sits. “Clear, realistic targets are an important part of driving policy outcomes,” she said. “However, as we work with the NSW Government to co-design an implementation plan, questions remain about the limited scale of available funding to assist councils towards achieving these targets.” Meanwhile, Gayle Sloan from WMRR said the organisation is overall happy with the plan, but again, noted that the question of funding is integral to making sure it happens. (Continued on page 20)

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IN June, the NSW government released its long-awaited waste strategy, NSW Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy 2041. The reaction of many players in the industry was one of relief. They finally had something tangible to look to in terms of what the NSW government was looking to achieve over the next 20 years. Like a lot of bureaucratic policies, the devil was in the detail, which to some, was missing. Yet, despite some misgivings, there were promising signs when it came to plastics, FOGO and C&D. What seemed to be a common theme after perusing the document among those polled by Inside Waste was, ‘who’s paying?’, or more accurately, ‘can we have our landfill levy money back, please? We need to invest in infrastructure’. The strategy acknowledges that there is a lack of bricks and mortar and that it needs to be built if the 2041 targets are to be met, and you can’t have infrastructure without the capital investment. An ideal starting point for the money needed

ONE of the biggest contributors to landfill waste is FOGO – specifically food organics. Some of the figures surrounding food waste in Australia make for sober reading. As well as the much touted seven million-plus tonnes that are thrown away every year, and how it produces about five per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, there is also the fact that almost 50 per cent of landfill waste is FOGO. Even more startling, according to the Australian Federal Government’s website environment.gov.au, 25 per cent of water used in agriculture to grow food is wasted. Tossing a burger in the bin, in terms of water used to create the ingredients, is about the same as having a shower for 90 minutes. Currently, Australia produces enough food to feed 75 million people. With a population of just over 25 million that is more than enough to feed the country, with plenty to export. But the country could still do a lot better on both the commercial and household FOGO front, according to some within the industry. The federal government’s target of 80 per cent waste diversion from landfill by 2030 is doable according to most, with FOGO playing a big part in making sure that target it reached. However, wishing the targets to be met, and meeting them, are not the same. Almost everybody spoken to for this article is in agreement, in principle, with the targets. (Continued on page 22)

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Frustration over levy distribution IT’S interesting how things fall into place. When putting together this issue of the magazine, there were a few stories that needed covering on different subjects. As I put together the stories and interviewed people on a variety of subjects, one point kept on coming up. Whether I was interviewing somebody about FOGO, landfill diversion, or energy from waste, the same point kept being made – why isn’t more of the landfill levy going to build infrastructure so the country/states can meet the obligations and deadlines governments are setting? How can we get our waste house in order when there is no clear direction? It’s a fair question, and one that is often skirted when asked of politicians. Treasurers and ministers of finance at state and federal level must lick their collective lips when they see the figures coming in with monies collected from levies. Pet projects will get the go-ahead and promises made to constituents can be fulfilled. The cynic in me says, ‘I understand why the politicians are reluctant Publisher Christine Clancy christine.clancy@primecreative.com.au

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General Manager (Sydney) Terry Wogan terry.wogan@primecreative.com.au

Inside Waste is available by subscription from the publisher. The rights of refusal are reserved by the publisher

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Articles All articles submitted for publication become the property of the publisher. The Editor reserves the right to adjust any article to conform with the magazine format.

Editor Mike Wheeler mike.wheeler@primecreative.com.au Business Development Manager Chelsea Daniel-Young chelsea.daniel@primecreative.com.au Design Production Manager Michelle Weston michelle.weston@primecreative.com.au Design Blake Storey, Kerry Pert, Aisling McComiskey Client Success Manager Justine Nardone justine.nardone@primecreative.com.au

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to put the money towards waste infrastructure’. Why? If the levies were spent on infrastructure, eventually there will be no more landfills – or very few – and the money will dry up. Why kill the golden goose? What happens to the funding for those pet projects? Politicians have to realise that the general public are becoming more educated on matters to do with waste, and if the infrastructure isn’t in place to meet the needs required by the deadlines the politicians imposed, fingers will start being pointed. Also, as most people have been made aware, the Waste Expo that was to happen at the end of October is now a virtual affair. The Waste Innovation and Recycling Awards that were to accompany the exhibition have been postponed but will still be a live event. The organiser, Prime Creative Media (the publisher of Inside Waste), has set a date of March 31, 2022 for the get together to be held at Showtime Events in Melbourne. The results of the annual Consultant’s Review will also be announced at the venue.

Head Office Prime Creative Pty Ltd 11-15 Buckhurst Street South Melbourne VIC 3205 Australia p: +61 3 9690 8766 enquiries@primecreative.com.au www.insidewaste.com.au

Copyright Inside Waste is owned by Prime Creative Media and published by John Murphy. All material in Inside Waste is copyright and no part may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic or mechanical including information and retrieval systems) without written permission of the publisher. The Editor welcomes contributions but reserves the right to accept or reject any material. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of information, Prime Creative Media will not accept responsibility for errors or omissions or for any consequences arising from reliance on information published. The opinions expressed in Inside Waste are not necessarily the opinions of, or endorsed by the publisher unless otherwise stated.

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Profile | Lincom Group

When was the company founded and why? Lincom Group was established in 1994 with the objective to bring the world’s best equipment to the local market. Today, we are a parent company for a specialised range of businesses, supplying the quarry, mining and forestry industries with the sales, service and hire of screening, crushing, bulk handling and recycling equipment. We are committed to providing continued customer support long after the equipment has been delivered, installed, and commissioned. We

understand the importance of the efficiency and reliability of our equipment to your business. Our goal is to reduce downtime and increase your productivity. We remain a wholly Australian owned and operated family business, backed by a team of dedicated industry professionals. What are its key products and services? Right from the beginning, we have been supplying the Powerscreen range of crushing and screening equipment to customers focused on recycling concrete and bricks into useful road base blends, pavement and drainage materials, etc. Since then, we have strived to partner with leading

equipment manufacturers to better serve the Industry. Morbark supply a range of durable, high-performance horizontal grinders and chippers for the green waste recycling and biomass industry. Kiverco manufactures mobile and static complete recycling plants for waste streams, such as construction and demolition, commercial and industrial, municipal solid waste, compost, bottom ash and dry mixed recyclables. Action Vibratory Equipment has been manufacturing bespoke, heavy-duty taper-slot and flip flow screens designed to excel in any challenging application. PRONAR manufacture an ever-expanding range of equipment including mobile slow and high-speed shredders, trommel screens, stockpilers and

windrow turners, while Neuenhauser manufactures a range of static and mobile star screens as well as singleshaft shredders and trommels. What are some of the plans and ambitions for the next 12 to 18 months? With the push for a circular economy and the Australian Government setting national targets for landfill diversion, plus driving a billion-dollar transformation of the waste and recycling industry, it’s a very exciting time for us as we can assist all types of businesses achieve their goal. Whether it is C&D/C&I sorting, or organics, timber, glass processing, we can provide the technical knowledge and equipment required. iw

Cleanaway wins contracts with 21 Melbourne councils CLEANAWAY has won four-year contracts with 21 of the 26 metropolitan councils in Melbourne that tendered their waste volumes. Regional manager, Melinda Lizza, said the successful bid for the Metropolitan Waste Resource Recovery Group (MWRRG) waste disposal contract doubled the volumes of waste that Cleanaway accepted at its three Melbourne disposal and transfer facilities, to more than 605,000 tonnes per year. She said Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) from kerbside bins would be tipped at the Melbourne Regional Landfill (MRL) at Ravenhall, the South-East Melbourne Transfer Station (SEMTS) at Dandenong and the Lysterfield Resource Recovery Centre under the contract, which started on April 1, 2021. Cleanaway already had a contract with 11 metropolitan councils to accept waste for disposal. This new contract means it will accept a further 10 councils’ waste. “We’re very proud to have won this contract, which demonstrates the value of our network of prized infrastructure assets and locations including landfills, resource recovery centres and transfer stations; MRL, SEMTS and Lysterfield,” Lizza said. “The MWRRG contract doubles the waste volumes going to these three sites and means we will be accepting about two thirds of the Melbourne 8

metro MSW kerbside waste produced in Melbourne. “It has started well with positive feedback from the councils about the convenience of our locations, the operational efficiency and longer opening hours of the facilities, as well as the turnaround times. “We haven’t had any issues handling the doubling of volume and, in fact, we could handle more.” Lizza said Cleanaway was spending $7.6 million at the facilities to

support the contract, with investments including dozers, trailers, wheel loaders, concrete pads, a new weigh bridge, among many other upgrades it will put in place. Most of the additional waste volumes are taken to SEMTS or Lysterfield, where it is consolidated by Cleanaway before being transported to MRL. “The new contract substantially increases volumes of waste accepted at Lysterfield, a drop-off and disposal

site, which previously only had relatively small amounts coming in,” Lizza said. The 11 councils that Cleanaway already services are Bayside, Melton, Moonee Valley, Moreland, Whitehorse TS, Maribyrnong, Cardinia, Stonnington, Brimbank, Yarra City and Hobsons Bay. The 10 additional councils are Frankston, Kingston, Whitehorse, Dandenong, Glen Eira, Manningham, Knox, Monash, Melbourne and Port Phillip. iw

The new contract doubles the waste volume going through Cleanaway’s facilities.

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

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// News

New plastic recycling plant for Laverton, Victoria PACT Group and Cleanaway have announced the creation of a new plastic recycling facility at Laverton, Victoria. This facility will become Australia’s largest post-consumer polyethylene recycling plant converting locally collected kerbside materials into high-quality, foodgrade rHDPE and rPP resin. This will facilitate the inclusion of locally processed recycled resin into food, dairy and other packaging, enabling brand owners and retailers to deliver on their sustainability objectives. The facility will process more than 20,000 tonnes, or the equivalent of over 500 000 plastic milk bottles and food tubs, collected from household recycling bins into food-grade resins and will be located at Cleanaway’s recycling facility at Laverton. This joint venture between Pact and Cleanaway complements the

existing PET joint venture between Pact, Cleanaway and Asahi, with construction of the country’s largest PET recycling facility in Albury well underway and ahead of schedule for commissioning later this year The new Laverton facility will augment Australia’s local processing capacity for recycled plastics, which are subject to a series of rolling export bans from later this year. Australia has lacked local onshore processing capacity to manage reprocessing of waste collected through kerbside collections, most of which was being sent offshore prior to export bans. This facility will enable food and beverage manufacturers to include locally processed recycled content in their packaging providing a major benefit to the environment. Many brand owners have committed to reduce their reliance on virgin

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

The new facility will be the largest postconsumer polyethylene recycling plant.

plastic by 2025. Construction of the plant will start towards the end of the year, and it is expected to be fully operational by December 2022. The business will trade as Circular Plastics Australia (PE). Cleanaway will provide the recycled plastic through its collection and sorting network, and Pact will provide technical knowledge,

operate the plant, and buy recycled plastic resin from the facility to use in its packaging with the balance sold to third parties. This project is being supported by the Victorian Government through its Recycling Victoria Infrastructure Fund and the Australian Government through its Recycling Modernisation Fund. iw

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

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Accident leads to discovery of plastic eating fungi SCIENTIST Samantha Jenkins was in the middle of research project on fungi for her company Biohm when she made an unusual discovery. Unexpectedly, she found that fungi had eaten its way through a plastic sponge that was sealing the substance within its parameters. The fungi had broken down the sponge and absorbed it like any other food. “Imagine a jar full of grain with a kind of lump of mushroom coming out of the top,” she said. “It didn’t look particularly exciting or fascinating. But as soon as it was cracked open, it was very, very cool.” The initial idea behind the research was to look into the different types of fungi that can be used in bio-based insulation panels, but the hungry fungus took the research in a different

direction. Jenkins’ company is looking at making the fungi strain more efficient for digestion, which could – in the long run – help get rid of plastic waste. Some types of plastics, such as PET (polyethylene terephthalate), are difficult to recycle in the traditional way. “You put in plastic, the fungi eat the plastic, the fungi make more fungi and then from that you can make biomaterials…for food, or feed stocks for animals, or antibiotics,” said Jenkins In another development, scientists at the University of Edinburgh used a lab-engineered version of the bacterium E. coli to convert a molecule derived from PET into terephthalic acid into pure

A new fungi strain could be used to get rid of difficult to recycle plastics.

flavoured vanillin. “Our study is still at a very early stage, and we need to do more to find ways to make the process

more efficient and economically viable,” says Dr Joanna Sadler, of the university’s School of Biological Sciences. iw

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Collaboration urges halving of food waste by 2030 A COLLABORATION between OzHarvest and the Monash Sustainable Development Institute (MSDI) is encouraging national action to halve food waste by 2030 in Australia. The collaboration has resulted in a report titled Halving Food Waste: Australia’s progress on SDG 12.3, which outlines the benefits of achieving this goal – the foundation work already undertaken – and makes key recommendations for national action including: • Government funded national programs to cut food waste across key sectors. • State-based grant programs to help businesses act to reduce food waste. • Building food waste reduction into national climate policies. • Applying the “Target. Measure. Act” approach as an enabler for government and businesses to reduce food waste at scale. • Including food waste in corporate greenhouse gas emission

reduction strategies and for businesses to sign up to Australia’s new Food Pact (delivered by Stop Food Waste Australia). • Upscale food rescue operations across the country and ensure edible surplus food is driven further up the waste hierarchy. • Inspire consumer action to reduce the 2.5 million tonnes of household food waste. Tackling food waste is an integral part of Australia’s efforts towards sustainable consumption addressed in goal 12.3, according to OzHarvest founder and CEO Ronni Kahn. “OzHarvest is committed to halving food waste in Australia and knows the immense size of the challenge we still face,” Kahn said. “This report aims to spark a national conversation on what needs to be done and with only nine years to go, the huge changes that are needed from policymakers, businesses and the public. We’ve collaborated with

Tackling food waste is an important part of Australia’s goal of sustainable consumption.

the brilliant team at Monash, who are experts in tracking Australia’s SDG progress.” The Sustainable Development Goals are a blueprint for a better future, including a focus on tackling food waste, MSDI chair Professor John Thwaites said. “Australia still has an opportunity to forge collective action on goal 12.3 but will need to act quickly and at scale to see results before 2030,” he said.

“This report is Australia’s shopping list for the essential ingredients to achieve this target, which has great social, economic and environmental benefits and contributes to other SDGs including Zero Hunger and Climate Action.” The report was launched recently to coincide with the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit in Rome, where the focus has been on the power of food systems to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). iw

Battery stewardship scheme gets accreditation The accreditation to the Battery Stewardship Scheme means it has the federal government’s tick of approval.

THE Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management, Trevor Evans, has announced that he expects all battery retailers and importers to participate in the newly accredited Battery Stewardship Scheme. Evans said that the scheme will triple the battery collection rate over a period of five years and divert 90 12

per cent of the collected materials from landfill. “Our current battery recycling rate is just not good enough. Accreditation of the scheme gives both the public and industry assurance that the scheme aligns with Australia’s circular economy principles. It is the Australian Government’s tick of approval.

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

“Accordingly, I am determined to see constructive engagement from all facets of the battery supply and recycling chain with the scheme—we need everyone in the supply chain to play their part in making sure that Australia gets its battery recycling right. Evans said he was putting all battery importers and retailers on notice that the Government expects them to participate in the scheme to meet their recycling and waste reduction obligations. “The Battery Stewardship Scheme will recover and recycle button batteries and the batteries we all routinely find ourselves replacing as consumers including AAs and AAAs. This scheme will not only benefit Australia’s unique environment by recovering and recycling the batteries currently sent to landfill, but will also help remove button batteries, which can be hazardous to small children,

from our homes,” said Assistant Minister Evans. Libby Chaplin, CEO of the Battery Stewardship Council (BSC) said that this marks a pivotal step in the BSC’s journey towards launching a national collection network by January 2022. Accreditation demonstrates how significantly the Government supports the Scheme and as a result the BSC expects to see importer and retailer participation grow. “The BSC is very pleased with the announcement from the Australian Government that our application for accreditation has been successful. This will give confidence to the battery collection and recycling industry to invest in infrastructure for collection and processing. It also puts greater emphasis on the Scheme’s commitment to transparency and responsible recycling which the BSC looks forward to delivering for the industry,” said Chaplin. iw

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Profile | Trevor Evans

What made you get into politics? As the CEO of the National Retail Association, I spent a lot of time talking to government agencies, ministers and other decisionmakers about government policies, particularly on behalf of small and family businesses. This made me think that small businesses needed all the help they could get in terms of advocacy and policymaking. I’d walked away from too many meetings worried that policy makers didn’t understand how small businesses worked. That’s what convinced me to make the switch from advocacy in an industry association, into politics itself, to

continue to fight for them. What do you like about the associate minister’s role? I have loved that I get to work on an important area of policy, where it’s been possible to quickly make a difference. This is a role that I’ve found to be impactful. I’ve also loved being able to bring my skills and experience working with different business models together, engaging with industry and other stakeholders. What are the most urgent matters within the portfolio and why? The first priority is helping to build better capabilities in Australia’s recycling sector as our waste export bans take effect, and delivering our funding through the Recycling Modernisation Fund. This is fundamentally about making Australia a more self-sufficient and self-reliant country, but equally it’s about growing a new more circular economy in Australia. The second priority is the actions set out in the national plastics plan. That contains a number of measures, such as dealing with some of the most

problematic plastic types that are harming our local environment. The third is progressing our work on reducing food and organics waste in Australia, which simultaneously achieves many important things. This improves the productivity of our agricultural sector and also has the effect of reducing emissions from the methane that is avoided from reducing organics in landfills. Are the targets set for packaging and recycling realistic? All of the governments of Australia have endorsed the packaging targets, because they are ambitious but possible. The targets were devised by the industry itself coming together in a collaborative way to talk about what they might be able to achieve if they worked together. The thing about packaging is that it’s as complicated as every product on every shelf, and there’s going to be many challenge. I draw confidence from the massive changes that we’re seeing on the shelves right now. How can we get local, state and federal government agencies

working closer/better together? The couple of years has been a rude reminder for many of us that Australia has different levels of government that are all sovereign and have their own responsibilities. The good news is that when it comes to waste and recycling reform, we were able to anticipate the importance of different levels of government working together. That’s why I can’t stress enough the importance of the National Waste Policy and the action plan that we bedded down with all governments of Australia a few years ago. Not only does the National Waste Policy set out the long-term targets that all governments have agreed to work towards, but the action plan sets out who’s leading, who’s supporting and in many instances who is going to be providing the funding. So it’s a really clear roadmap as to how the different levels of government need to work together with other stakeholders to achieve our longterm national waste targets. iw

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One person can produce around 8kg of dialysis waste per year.

Disrupting Australia’s attitude to medical waste EVEN before he graduated from ANU, Ryan Pike was getting to work developing sustainable solutions to address Australia’s medical waste problem. Every day, truckloads of medical waste end up in landfill. Surgical items, bed curtains, gowns, packaging, single-use equipment – are all dumped at rubbish sites around the country. This mountain of waste isn’t recycled or repurposed. “You take it away to a thermal incineration plant, or to an autoclave, but at the end of the day it always ends up in landfill,” Pike said. But there are other solutions, which he is keen to see become adopted. Pike, who in July graduated in absentia from The Australian National University (ANU) with a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Engineering (Honours), joined Canberra company 180 Waste Group as an intern in 2019. During his internship he secured provisional approval for a treatment method that enables hospitals to dispose of medical waste on-site. Now, he’s pioneering sustainable engineering projects to recycle clinical waste. “I saw that the next wave of problems that we’re going to face are going to be very multifaceted,

they’re going to not just require an electronics engineer or a civil engineer, rather it’s going to be an integrated system,” he said of his decision to major in mechatronics. Reducing the amount of medical waste that ends up in landfill has several flow-on benefits, Pike said. But his long-term goal is to simplify solutions for the repurposed waste to enter the circular economy, a concept that aims to disrupt the traditional journey of production to consumption to waste, and focuses on reusing and recycling as much as possible. After completing his internship, Pike is now 180 Waste Group’s chief technology officer. He’s secured collaborations, including with capstone projects at ANU, to find end-of-life solutions for hospital and at-home dialysis waste, and sanitary waste. One project, in partnership with Baxter Healthcare, developed solutions to process dialysis waste and turn it into reusable products. “One person per day can produce around 8kg of dialysis waste, and more than 5,000 tonnes of plastic product is used per year in Australia. We did a conservative estimate of clinical waste from public and private hospitals, and it was around 43,000 tonnes per year,” Pike said. iw

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Tip Top ditches millions of plastic tags BREAD manufacturer Tip Top has launched its sustainable bag tags in Victoria and New South Wales. This move will eventually eliminate 400 million pieces of single-use plastic every year as they roll out across Australia and New Zealand. In 2020, the company switched to 100 per cent recycled and 100 per cent recyclable cardboard bag tags in South Australia. “We’re doing it because it’s simply the right thing to do,” said Graeme Cutler, director of sales and CSR Lead at Tip Top ANZ. “We want to be proactive, rather than wait for our customers to ask us to address our waste. And, when it comes to working together as a nation to eliminate single-use plastics, we want to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem.”

Following on from its debut in South Australia, the initiative will remove almost 100 million tags across the three states. Tip Top encourages consumers to recycle their cardboard tags in kerbside recycling bins by tucking the tag securely inside other paper or cardboard products, such as an envelope or paper bag, giving them the best chance of being recycled into a new product rather than being sent to landfill. According to figures from the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment, Australians consume roughly 3.5 million tonnes of plastics annually and Australian households are the largest contributors to this waste. “Small pieces of plastic such as bread tags are problematic in recycling and waste streams,” said Rebecca

Gilling, deputy CEO of Planet Ark. “For this reason, Planet Ark is pleased to see Tip Top designing out waste by replacing plastic bread tags with a circular solution made from 100 per cent recycled cardboard. “When recycled correctly, the cardboard will be used again, closing the recycling loop and keeping resources in use.” The Australian government has plans to phase out “problematic and unnecessary plastics” by 2025, the Victorian Government has committed to ban certain single-use plastic items by February 2023, while the New South Wales Government has plans in place to phase out these plastics from next year. On top of the Australia-wide rollout of the cardboard tags planned to take place over the next two years, the

The new Tip Top tags are being made from recycled cardboard.

sustainable bread tags are the first of a series of packaging innovations under the company’s ‘Feeding Aussie families more sustainably’ vision, including addressing recycling confusion by updating packaging with the Australasian Recycling Label. iw

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News //

$600 million for infrastructure THE Australian and New South Wales Governments have announced 22 new recycling projects across metropolitan and regional NSW as part of a $600 million national rollout of recycling infrastructure. “The joint funding component between the Commonwealth and NSW for these projects is $24 million, generating industry investment of $59 million,” said Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley. “This is about easing pressure on our environment by recycling more materials including plastics, tyres, glass, cardboard and coffee cups, and importantly it is about creating jobs and economic investment. “We need to capture the economic value of waste; we need to create markets for recycled materials and this level of investment will drive jobs in key areas at a critical time. “This funding and these new projects will help to boost our existing recycling capabilities, support

innovative re-use of recycled materials and boost NSW’s recycling capacity.” Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management, Trevor Evans, said that the range of projects selected for funding cover the gamut of recycling materials and remanufacturing uses and introduce the latest innovations in recycling technology. “We are investing in everything from new and upgraded material recycling facilities in regional areas, to mobile plastic from e-waste processing facilities,” Assistant Minister Evans said. A further grant round of RMF funding will open by the end of 2021. The $190 million Recycling Modernisation Fund investment, and measures to support Australia’s National Waste Policy Action Plan, will create approximately 10,000 new jobs around Australia over the next 10 years. Key infrastructure project outcomes:

• Establishment of a new $40m regional Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) to recycle waste glass, plastic, tyres and paper and cardboard in Newcastle. • Five mobile plastic processing facilities across Sydney to process almost 5,000 tonnes of plastic each year. • New state-of-the-art infrastructure in Erskine Park to reprocess 3,200 tonnes of used Off The Road (OTR) tyres for use in road construction and manufactured rubber-based products. • Expand a Wetherill Park plant that turns paperboard beverage containers collected through container deposit schemes and coffee cups collected through the ‘Simply Cups’ recycling program, into sustainable building products as a substitute for plaster and particle boards. • Upgrading glass processing in western Sydney to process an

The new investment in infrastructure is for all of NSW.

additional 50,000 tonnes of glass each year that will increase the kerbside glass recovery from 53 per cent to 60 per cent. • Upgrading moulding equipment at Sulo’s Somersby facility to recycle old kerbside bins and bottle caps back into mobile garbage bins, creating circular kerbside bins. • Expanding Australian Recycled Plastics facility at Narrabri to allow both PET and HDPE/PP lines to run simultaneously and at full capacity, processing up 9,300 tonnes per annum. iw

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// Strap

From Fromthe theCEO’s CEO’sdesk desk – now this Environment Ministers will meet for the second really is a race!

time this year on 7 December, following the first 2018 Meeting Ministers (MEM) in THE race is onoftoEnvironment meet Australia’s 2030 emissions April, which was in part a response to the reduction target – a 26-28 per cent reductionimport below restrictions by aChina’s Sword 2005 levels –driven but is this race thatNational will adequately Policy the effects this crisis? policy has had across addressand our growing climate theAustralia’s Australian waste and resource recovery (WARR) response to date has been inadequate industry. Key decisions derived from the April if the intent is to make impactful and deep cuts toMEM include: greenhouse gas emissions. Ahead of United Nations

(UN) climate talks in Glasgow at the end of the year, a •number Reducing waste generation, a target of countries, including theendorsing US, Japan and the of 100% of Australian packaging being recyclable, UK, have increased their targets to 50-52 per cent, compostable or 68 reusable 2025, and Australian developing 46 per cent, and per centbyrespectively. targets for recycled content inon packaging. the other hand, has continued to hold firm to the • Increasing Australia’s domestic recycling 26-28 per centcapacity. target since 2015. • Increasing the demand for recycled products. Based on the latest federal data, Australia is on track to cut emissions by • Exploring opportunities to advance waste-to-energy waste-to-biofuels. only a third of a percent per year – that is 0.28 per centand – over the next decade. • Updating thethe2009 Waste Strategy by year will include circular According to Climate Council, Australia needsend, to cutwhich its emissions 21 times economy principles. faster – upping its target to a 75 per cent reduction in emissions below 2005 levels by 2030 – if Australia is to play its part in avoiding the impacts of our worsening It is time tonoting take stock andIntergovernmental examine what has been since these climate, that the Panel onachieved Climate Change (IPCC)decisions has were announced. Now, seven (7) months may not seem like a long time, however issued a “code red” for the climate crisis in early August. in that have seen change further is markets close (Malaysia, Indonesia, and Wetime knowwe that climate an increasing concern amongst the Vietnam) community. if you are an operator under continued financial stress, seven (7) months could A recent Lowy Institute poll found that six in 10 Australians believe global warming make to beorabreak seriousyou. and pressing problem while 55 per cent of Australians – an eight -point increase since 2019 – say the government’s main priority for energy policy Following April MEM, have had three74(3)perstates step that in with varying should bethe “reducing carbon we emissions”. Notably, cent agree the benefits degrees of financial assistance for industry (councils and operators). This should of taking action on climate change will outweigh the costs and 78 per cent would besupport expected considering almost all states (except Queensland and Tasmania) a net-zero emissions target for 2050. Even heavy industries are feeling have access to significant levyisincome On the eastern seaboard, Victoria the pressure. A casewaste in point mining each giantyear. Fortescue who recently announced it has approximately $600 million in waste levy reserves in the Sustainability Fund would unveil a target in September to lower the greenhouse gases of its customers, and NSW raises than of $700 annum from the waste levy. There is following in themore footsteps BHPmillion and Rioper Tinto. certainly no lack funds that can be reinvested essential industry. Our waste andofresource recovery (WARR) sectorinto is inour a unique position, given it is intertwined with virtually every industry, meaning we have the ability to help Funding helpsreduce but as wecarbon know,impacts, the money goes toa what much other sectors their in addition welonger already way do towith Government support and leadership, as well as appropriate policy levers. mitigate emissions. For instance, through landfill gas capture, FOGO initiatives, or maximising energy from waste. Rethinking our value chain, where the focus goes VICTORIA beyond recycling to the upper rungs of the adopted waste hierarchy – avoidance, Victoria been the most active andinearnest in and supporting the while industry reuse, has and arguably repair – will enable efficiency gains material energy use, post-China, with two (2) relief packages announced to support the recycling preserving the economic value embedded in products and reducing resource use. industry, valuedNations at a total of $37 million. The Victorian Government The United Development Programme (UNDP) has noted thathas also gone above and beyond all others states by announcing it would takeprimary a leadership depending on the sector, value retention processes could reduce materialrole in demand creatingbymarket demand for recycled products. upwards of 80 per cent and together with remanufacturing, carbon emissions could be reduced by upwards of 79 per cent. If Australia scales up SOUTH AUSTRALIA manufacturing using recycled materials and moves towards clean energy, we will Government $12.4 million support package comprising $2 million of undoubtedlyannounced create new aindustries (and jobs), decouple from global economies, additional expenditure, $5 million additional funding for a loan scheme, together and decrease resource consumption – all of which will reduce our consumption with targeted funding from the Green Industries SA budget. The Government footprint, improve resource efficiency, and eliminate unnecessary transportation has also offered grants for recycling infrastructure.

industry however the Queensland Government has embarked on the development of a waste management strategy underpinned by a waste disposal levy to increase recycling and carbon neutrality. recovery and create new jobs. The State will re-introduce a $70/ that would drive tonne landfill levy March 2019. also strongclimate attempts to use policy However, despite thein2030 target, weThere do notare have a federal or energy levers (levy discounts and exemptions) to incentivise the use of recycled material policy that maps out robust pathways, actions, or responsibilities set for industries and make it cost competitive with virgin material. However, little has been done to to make real and quantifiable change towards net zero. While there are jurisdictions establish new markets and Government has not taken the lead in the procurement that have started to turn their attention to the carbon issue and should be of recycledand material. There are availableend-of-pipe for resource recoverythe operations commended, while industry hasgrants been managing emissions, in Queensland been allocated to assist in 2018. This is federal governmentalthough needs to no stepmonies up in ahave number of ways. troubling Queensland out its Container Refund Scheme With 2030as only nine years rolled away, we’d suggest that Australia requires on its 1 November, which will likely impact the cost and revenue models of the State’s – as we own green deal including a green consumption pledge to drive real changeMRFs in how have seen most recently in NSW. we approach sustainability, climate action and purchasing. Over the last few years, WMRR has been engaging with governments on how, AUSTRALIA asWESTERN key material managers of valuable used resources, our sector can maximise The Western up a Waste Taskforce in direct response to opportunities toAustralian drive WARRGovernment impact areas,set including carbon emissions. The next the China National Sword. As part of this announcement, the State Government and important step in this journey is to build on the national emphasis on organics urged all local councils tostreams begin the of a three (3)-bin system and - red for and identify priority material thatutilisation have the greatest impact by weight, general waste, yellow for recyclables and green for organic the coming carbon emissions across actions within the waste hierarchy thatwaste should- over be tackled reduce contamination. this taskforce is aand step in the rightofdirection, toyears reducetoemissions, as well as driveWhile avoidance, production consumption we are yet to see any tangible results from it or any funding for recycled goods, and extending lifecycle through right to repair and industry. re-use. In October, the WA Waste Authority released its draft Waste Strategy to 2030, Jurisdictions have a key role to play in this work by creating systemswhich and comprises a comprehensive and detailed roadmap towards the State’s shared vision of regulations that drive circularity, including indicators and metrics in their reporting becoming a sustainable, low-waste, circular economy. that capture these impacts and the effect that this has on Australia’s carbon and water footprint over a product’s lifecycle. COMMONWEALTH In quantifying a material’s footprint, we can develop strategies across the supply Following thedrive MEM in April,change Australia now has a newresource Federal Environment Minister, chain that will positive in product design, minimisation (and Melissa Price, who in October reiterated to media MEM’s commitment to on the flip side, maximisation), and sustainable material management that will explore wastea to energy part ofbenefits, the solution to the impacts of China’s National Sword, enable number of as economic including carbon emissions mitigation. This which is troubling (EfW is not a solution to recycling). The Commonwealth is certainly not a novel approach, having already been undertaken in Europe where has backed the Australian Label and the National Packaging it also has been established that theRecycling priority materials areendorsed food, biomass, C&D, critical Targets developed by the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), raw materials, and plastic. which has to date, failed to incorporate industry feedback in the development As they say, knowledge is power and it is when we have accurate data on ofimpacts these of targets. To throughout the Commonwealth’s has positive been significant the materials their lifecyclescredit, that wethere can make coordination in reviewing the National Policy, with Initiative, the Department of change. For instance, by potentially replicatingWaste the EU’s Ecodesign a Environment bringing together industry players and States during the review long-term framework that sets mandatory ecological requirements for all products process. sold in the EU. The aim of this initiative is to ensure that manufacturers will, at the design stage, be obliged to reduce energy consumption and other negative The updated Policy will now go (noting before Environment Ministers on emissions 7 December. The environmental impacts of products that 70 per cent of carbon Commonwealth can play a key role – one that goes beyond the development of the are related to material management), while enforcing considerations such National Waste Policy. WMAA is supportive the Federal as recyclability, polluting emissions, waste, andofwater use. Government maximising the levers has,offincluding taxation andmust importation powers, tothat maintain 2030 is notit far and Australia can and join its neighbours have a strong, sustainable waste resource further committed to and reducing their recovery emissionsindustry. to net zero by 2050. These targets will not be achieved by sheer luck or by the efforts of a few; instead, we AHEAD OF MEM 2 targeted approach by the federal government now to give us need a concerted and There may be movement across aAustralia, states doing better than the best chance at success in playing significantwith rolesome in mitigating the impacts others, but the consensus is, progress is still taking way too long. It is evident that of climate change. there are funds available in almost all States to assist with developing secondary manufacturing however the only way that this will really happen is Gayle Sloan, Chiefinfrastructure, Executive Officer, WMRR if there is government leadership around mandating recycled content in Australia now, not later.

NEW SOUTH WALES At first glance, New South Wales’ eye-watering $47 million recycling support package was heralded as the spark of hope industry needed. However, on closer inspection, the bulk of this package that was funded via the Waste Less, Recycle More initiative and therefore the waste levy, was not new, making it very difficult for stakeholders, including local government, to utilise the funds as they were already committed to other activities. Some of the criteria proposed by the NSW EPA also made it challenging for industry to apply to these grants. On the plus side, efforts are being made by the NSW Government to stimulate demand for recycled content through the intergovernmental agency working groups that have been established, though no tangible increase in demand or facilities have developed… Yet.

Voluntary schemes like the Used Packaging NEPM, under which APCO is auspiced, are not working. We have 1.6million tonnes of packaging waste in Australia, which needs to be used as an input back into packaging. Barriers to using recycled content in civil infrastructure must be identified and removed, and Government must lead in this field and prefer and purchase recycled material. A tax on virgin material should also be imposed as it is overseas. MEM must show strong leadership on this issue. Ministers have, since April, dealt directly with operators and councils that are under stress and we have a chance to create jobs and investment in Australia at a time when manufacturing is declining. Ministers have the opportunity to be leaders of today, not procrastinators – leaders of tomorrow and we are urging them to act and not just talk in December.

QUEENSLAND Unlike its neighbours, Queensland did not provide any financial support to

Gayle Sloan Chief Executive Officer

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

NSW 2041 //

Show us the money (Continued from front page) “IF it is just paid for by government then we are just delivering for government and the industry doesn’t necessarily have a stake. That is why we want more of… the landfill levy coming back to us to incentivise that investment, and also have something at the table – to have that joint/ shared investment in these facilities,” she said. Local Government NSW president, Linda Scott, shared similar sentiments on the importance of the landfill levy being reinvested in the industry. “Only 26 per cent of the NSW Waste Levy is spent on the purpose for which it is collected – the remaining three quarters of the fund is spent by the NSW Government on their priorities outside waste,” she said. “Councils continue to advocate for the NSW Government to reinvest the entire NSW Waste Levy to support councils to recycle and create a circular economy – there is still so much more that the NSW Government could do to reduce waste and create jobs, if we also reinvest the rest.” Tony Khoury from the NSW WCRA was more conciliatory, however continued to focus on the need to review the spending of the levy. “The WCRA supports the Auditor General’s recommendation of a five-yearly review of the waste levy,” he said. “It’s the view of WCRA that the initial review promptly commences in 2021.” As for the rest of the strategy, the reaction is a mixed bag. WMRR’s Sloan is pleased that there is a document out after a policy vacuum for a number of years. She says that certain

goals are being set, so the industry has a clear idea as to where the NSW government is heading. This includes a FOGO strategy and deadline. The strategy also indicated officially that carbon reduction is an important issue, while a couple of other topics that have needed addressing for some time are being tackled. “We have a very clear commitment to the construction and demolition industry and how we look at supply chain,” said Sloan. “It’s probably the most developed strategy in relation to C&D. We finally have an outcome on plastics, and it’s gone further than anyone else. They have also potentially called APCO’s bluff by stating: ‘You know what, we’re not sure you’re going to get there and we’re going to put in standards around packaging design into legalisation that no one else has’. “In essence, they have taken a long time, but they’ve come out with something and a number of issues that no one else has attempted yet. I’m going to hold them to account to deliver these things.” Local Government NSW’s Scott also sees some good news in the plan, as long as the NSW government keeps councils up to date with the various strategies. She says local councils are essential in making sure the plan is carried out – something that the state government needs to remember. “The NSW Government must work with councils, as we are on the waste and recycling frontline,” she said. “Councils are delighted that

the strategy incorporates our proposal for a 10-year infrastructure plan to promote investment in strategic waste infrastructure and jobs growth. Then there is the proposed $65 million program to tackle food and green organic waste (FOGO), via a sensible phased process, which will help smooth the financial impact of any changes to our bin systems.” The SSROC’s Helen Sloan has hinted, that moving forward, like Scott she wants more collaboration, not just at state level, but federal level, too. She believes that this cooperation will lend itself to a smoother outcomes for all levels of government as the strategy is implemented. “No strategy is perfect, which underscores the importance of a truly consultative process between state and local governments to co-design a realistic implementation plan that works to targets while meeting councils’ needs and those of the community that they serve,” she said. She said her organisation is also looking forward to working with state

Helen Sloan said the SSROC wants more collaboration at all levels of government.

and federal counterparts to address key legislative and regulatory barriers to achieving a circular economy. This includes updating the definition of waste to stimulate innovation and shift responsibility to generators; improving data transparency to guide investment, procurement and services; adopting a sandbox approach to emerging technologies, where promising new technologies receive regulatory and financial support to demonstrate proof of concept and feasibility; strengthening product

Infrastructure - or lack thereof - is key to NSW meeting its landfill diversion targets.

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// NSW 2041

NSW is running out of time to meet its 80 per cent landfill diversion goals.

stewardship schemes to drive reuse and repair; and mandating a uniform recycling label.” For MRA’s Ritchie, there are some other positives, such as mandating gas capture in landfills, FOGO collection being mandated, and the single-use plastics ban. However, he does find certain aspects are short on detail. “What is missing is the overall plan of how we are going to achieve the stated objectives,” he said. “Most of that has been deferred to further reviews and stakeholder consultation. You could resolve my commentary down to, ‘well, it’s a pity these things are not already in the plan’. They had two-and-a-half years to develop the plan. If we get these reviews announced in the next six months then I would be happy. “I would get those things out to the stakeholder groups so they can make those decisions. That would be a great outcome. But we need to do it quickly. We haven’t got another two-and-a-half years. At the moment we have a zero chance of getting to an 80 per cent landfill diversion target by 2030.” Ritchie said if the following four things can be addressed quickly, it will go towards a long way for the 20-year plan to being realised. They are: • The planning for infrastructure needs to be accelerated. • The regulatory or price signal needs to be clear – that NSW wants

“No strategy is perfect, which underscores the importance of a truly consultative process between state and local governments to co-design a realistic implementation plan that works to targets while meeting councils’ needs and those of the community that they serve.” investment in the state. • T he energy-from-waste policy needs to be clear • There is a major landfill shortfall with no mechanism to address it. WMRR’s Gayle Sloan agrees with some of Ritchie’s points. There hasn’t been much movement in NSW, and she says the state has a huge job to do in order to get to 80 per cent diversion of landfill waste by 2030. Like Ritchie, she sees it as a challenge to achieve what is needed in the time frame given. She says that if the state can get the planning system to support the pathways to deliver infrastructure in less than five years, it might work. “If we can’t deliver a piece of infrastructure in less than three to five years we won’t have any kit on the ground until 2025-27, so it is going to make it quite challenging,” she said. “If we can have a set of waste and resource recovery environmental planning policies that start to prioritise this infrastructure as essential, then it might work. This is similar as to what you would do with water and utilities.”

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

Finally, there is the point about finding markets for the end products. At the time of the auditor’s report in 2020, the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment secretary, Jim Betts, was quoted as saying that “the department was leading the development of a 20-year waste strategy in partnership with the EPA, which will provide a long-term strategic focus on building markets for waste resources”, and that “The strategy is expected to be finalised late next year [2021]”. The strategy document itself acknowledges that this needs addressing – To support purchasing decisions and the market response, we will publish a directory of recycled material suppliers, along with a register of upcoming government infrastructure and construction projects that will procure recycled material. This will help industry plan for the pipeline of demand, and to demonstrate the NSW Government’s commitment to supporting recycling markets, [by] report[ing] annually on the use of recycled content in government

procurement and its associated impact on emissions and waste reduction [page 28]’. Helen Sloan from the SSROC knows that in order for that issue to be addressed, she believes cooperation between all levels of government needs to occur. Now. “Coordinated efforts by all levels of government are essential for procuring cost-effective goods and services for councils while establishing large-scale demand that creates a favourable environment for industry to invest in necessary infrastructure and skilled labour,” she said. “Scalable government procurement, based on triple-bottom-line sustainability KPIs, can effectively develop markets for recycled materials and achieve supply chain efficiencies.” As for outcomes, Ritchie had this to say. “I think the bureaucrats have led industry along saying it’ll all be in the 20-year plan, and when it finally got to cabinet, the minister said: ‘Hold on, I’m not sure if we can commit to that as a government,’” he said. “It has been fragmented up. The energyfrom-waste policy has been put in a corner for further deliberation as has the landfill levy. Same with the infrastructure. That’s okay to do that, and appropriate, but we have waited two-and-a-half years to get to this point. We are running out of time.” iw

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

FOGO //

A lot of FOGO waste needs to be sorted at the kerbside so it can be repurposed properly.

Is 80 per cent diversion possible? (Continued from front page) “THERE is no one I have spoken to that says they are not for a target,” said Steve Cosatto, manager of resource recovery for Cairns Regional Council. “I think 80 per cent is tough and ambitious. It is going to need a lot of work with all three levels of government. The challenge for us will be going from a relatively low base to reaching the target in ten years.” Getting through to the public is key, according to Rose Read, CEO of the National Waste and Recycling Industry Council (NWRIC). If you don’t get the public onboard, then it is going to be a long and hard road trying to reach the targets. “Community engagement is key because one of the main things about doing all of this is making sure that you prevent contamination,” she said. “You also need to make sure people – whether they are a business or a household – only put organics in that bin. We do not want contamination in this stream. Education and very clear messaging about what goes in the bin is really important.” Peter Olah, CEO of Australian Organics Recycling Association (AORA), sees another issue, and one that Cosatto acknowledges, too – getting consistency within the different states. Currently, the national recycling rates of organics is about 52 per cent. At state level, the rates vary markedly. 22

“A state like SA is probably above 80 per cent at the moment,” said Olah. “The weakest big states, like WA and Queensland, are in the mid 30s. In Queensland, you have a number of cascading problems that have stopped that number getting better. To be fair, that hasn’t just affected organics recycling. Organics is the worst of it in Queensland. In WA, they haven’t tried much to be honest. It has been limited. “Let’s take the 80 per cent by 2030 target, which is necessary to meet all the other targets. In a state like Queensland or WA, to get to the 80 per cent of a larger input, you basically have to treble the size of the industry in nine years. This is in a state where the industry has barely grown for decades. And this is especially important as there is a lack of infrastructure.” Infrastructure is one problem, but Katy Barfield, CEO of food social enterprise Yume, sees funding in general as an issue. While she likes the idea behind the National Food Waste Strategy, and the likes of entities such as Stop Food Waste Australia and Fight Food Waste CRC, she says monies from both state and federal governments are nowhere near enough for what is trying to be achieved. “There are the sector action plans that are a really good step-by-step way where you can prevent food from

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

going to waste,” said Barfield. “The downside is that they have put $4 million into this up to June 2024. That is miniscule. That is even less money than it takes to run one food rescue organisation for one year. “The reality is, it is still a pitiful amount of funding to execute the plan. There are more than seven million tonnes of food waste going to waste every year in Australia. How are you going to redirect 3.6 million tonnes of commercial and household food waste on $4 million? It is just bonkers. It is not going to happen unless they fund it better.” Then there are the secondary issues, according to Olah. While food dumped into landfills produces the worst greenhouse gas, methane, there are the peripheries that surround trying to get FOGO – especially the food component – to be recycled and repurposed properly. He mirrors Rose Read when it comes to getting the message out. “Anything that is large, and paper-based is not a problem – any commercial processor can deal with that,” he said. “The biggest problem area is plastic film. Anything that is a plastic film, or a coating of plastic film, is problematic. And very hard, in a technological sense, to process out once it has contaminated the bin. History shows that FOGO rolled out badly, in the food component

particularly, increases that risk. “You need two things up front – you need public participation, and you need the public understanding what goes into these things. You need presorting at the kerb because you can’t get technology to sort the plastic out at the MRFs.” And what about at the ground level? Ground zero if you like – the farm. According to the Fight Food Waste Cooperative Research Centre, about 25 per cent of food never leaves the farm. Far too much according to Katy Barfield, who points out this happens for many and varying reasons. It is the fault of both consumers and the big retailers such as Coles and Woolworths – being fussy not about the taste of fruit and veg, but what it looks like. This is backed up the CEO of Queensland Federated Farmers, Georgina Davis. “There are market barriers in terms of some of the contract expectations around the visual characteristics around fruit and veg. Some buyers think some bananas can be too big, too straight, too bendy. It blows my mind because it still tastes like a banana to me. It’s still taken the same amount of water, electricity and fertiliser to grow as a banana that meets the standards,” said Davis. “The other thing is imperfections in skin, which again could be caused by climatic conditions. It does not in

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// FOGO

any way impact either the quality or the freshness, taste or flavour of the vegetable or fruit.” This, on top of being 9,000 pickers short this coming season due to COVID, means that this year a lot of fruit and veg will be left in the ground, on a vine, or in a tree. Then, according to Davis, you have the vicious circle that is climate change. Putting food in a landfill produces methane, which is 30 times more potent than CO2. That in turn affects the climate, which is really having a negative effect on Queensland growers, who then have to landfill the food, which creates more methane. “If you’d asked me two years ago, pre COVID, I would have said the biggest risks in terms of food waste on farm, would be climate change,” she said. “Particularly in places like Lockyer Valley, which is a large growing region west of Brisbane. It is an area where we have a lot of fruit, vegetable and saladtype foods grown. It is the food/market bowl for Brisbane. “When we have days where we have excessive hot temperatures – 35 to 40 degrees – they really knock certain types of crops around. Things like broccoli and lettuce. With all the best

will in the world, if you have four to five days of those 40-degree days, you may well lose your crop. It will perish. You can water it, you can do whatever you want, but it will ultimately not be fit for picking or market.” Then there is the waste levy. While some states have quite high levies, it is not surprising to learn that the two states with the most to do in terms of reaching diversion targets also have the lowest levies. And in the case of Queensland, it has made a rod for its own back after it reintroduced the levies that were nixed by former premier Campbell Newman when he was voted out in 2018. “The reason we have such a poor industry is Queensland is that landfills have always been cheap and plentiful,” said AORA’s Peter Olah. “There are lots of holes, lots of quarries and lots of mines. This means councils have never really moved beyond ‘cheapest and easiest’. “You had Campbell Newman get rid of the waste levy altogether. The then Labor opposition said they would introduce the waste levy. Councils kicked up a big stink and said, ‘this is going to be a cost on the ratepayers’, to which the appropriate response

should have been, ‘yes, it is designed to change their behaviour and your behaviour and if you do the right thing and don’t send stuff to landfill, then the impost stop’. “But Queensland being Queensland, the government response was ‘we understand that, so for kerbside collection that goes to landfill, we’ll pay you 105 per cent of what it costs you to take it to landfill. You will make a profit for pushing stuff to landfill’. “You’ve got a waste levy introduced specifically to change behaviour and introduce a cost impost against landfill that is now being used to pay councils to do more landfills. The equivalent policy would be the federal government increasing the tobacco excise and then feeling sorry for smokers and giving them free cigarettes.” Queenslander Cosatto believes it’s not that simple. Councils were not given enough time to get used to the levy, and they were concerned about a backlash from ratepayers. Thus, when what is called the Annual Levy Advance was introduced, councils took the opportunity and ran with it. “When the levy was reintroduced, councils were basically given 12 months’ notice to get it all set up

again,” he said. “There was a lot of concern among councils about the impact on ratepayers. “To put it in context, at the same time, Coles introduced a 5 cent cost for plastic bags – and that is not a huge impost as it is certainly less than what the levy would cost ratepayers – and Coles copped a social media blitz from people that were not happy about it.” Olah believes every state is on board to reach the targets, but it’s getting there that will be the issue. “There is a lot of good will and a lot of drive in most of the states to do this. It’s always been granular – some states will go a lot quicker and a lot better than others,” he said. “If I had to guess, I think NSW will go pretty well, pretty quickly. I don’t think Victoria will be far behind. I think WA will do pretty well, simply because it has that cabinet level idea about what it is going to do, and it will make it happen one way or another. Clearly you will not get every state hitting 80 per cent in nine years. “I think the industry, more than any time in its history, is hopeful. And it is ready to grow. The industry can grow quite quickly if it is given the correct signals and environment.” iw

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Right to Repair //

Right to repair needs attention to help circular economy By Mike Wheeler GROWING up we moved house a lot. From the ages of 5 to 15 we had moved no less than 10 times, most of it due to my father being a builder – he’d build a house, we’d move in, then he’d sell it, and we’d move on. One of the constants were our appliances. We’d go through quite a few things, but the television, fridge and washing machine lasted forever – we only got rid of our black and white television, not because it didn’t work, but we wanted to experience the wonderment of colour. And even when we got our first colour television in 1980, it lasted a good 12 years. Like its predecessor, it didn’t run out of puff, we just wanted a bigger screen. Most of us saw these purchases as value for money. But there was also an underlying benefit that we didn’t even consider at the time – the longer the appliance lasted, the longer it took it to be put in the inorganic collection and end up in the local landfill. No recycling back then. Not only that, but if something went wrong with an appliance, there was a cost incentive of getting a repairer to fix it rather than throw it on the scrap heap. Fast-forward a few decades and the landscape has changed. Not

only are we throwing things out in a more disposable manner, but technology companies are making it especially difficult to get items fixed. This is usually due to either cost restraints, or untenable warranties that make it impossible to get third-party repairers to fix something at a reasonable price. A study commissioned by the German Environment Agency five years ago showed that units sold to replace a defective appliance grew from 3.5 per cent in 2004 to 8.3 percent in 2012. It also found that appliances that had to be replaced within the first five years of use grew from 7 per cent in 2004 to 13 per cent in 2013. Planned obsolescence? Some cynics think so, but also, again, the cost to repair can inhibit consumers from taking an option that will save a lot of this type of waste ending up in landfill or in a MRF. And it is the last part of this equation that has got Matthew Rimmer thinking out loud that such situations need to change. Rimmer, who is a Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation Law at the Faculty of Business and Law, Queensland University of Technology, is a keen proponent of the right-torepair – the ability for consumers to get third-party repairers to fix products at a more reasonable cost

than it would to replace a unit. E-waste is a huge problem, said Rimmer, and it’s not something that is new, but has been around for a while, albeit for different products. “When I was a student in the 1990s, the focus was squarely upon industrial design and cars and the ability to repair those vehicles,” said Rimmer. “Since then, we’ve had an explosion of information and communication technologies. There has been a lot of interest in the right-to-repair in respect of PCs and gadgets and tablets and iPhone. There’s also been a lot of interest in some of the contents in relation to vehicles. Tesla for instance, has been opposed to repair – there has been lots of issues in terms of some smart cars and autonomous vehicles and engagement there.” When it comes to e-waste, the manufacturers of such items are almost unanimous in their opposition for the right-to-repair legislation being implemented. When such a law was mooted in the US state of Nebraska three years ago, Apple lobbied against it, while gaming companies such as Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony also stated that they were against any type of legislation. Why? In a letter sent to Nebraskan legislator Lydia Brasch, a group of tech companies calling

itself the State Privacy and Security Coalition outlined the reasons it opposed such legislation: “We are concerned that legislative Bill 67 would jeopardize consumer safety and security, is unnecessary and compromises intellectual property...Customer safety, security and privacy are fundamental goals in the design of our membership’s hardware, software and services...Our free market economy already provides a wide-range of consumer choice for repair with varying levels of quality, price and convenience without the mandates in this legislation.” Cynics also point out that as well as safety and security issues, any right of repair laws will mean these companies no longer have a monopoly on repairing their own gear. The federal government’s Productivity Commission of Enquiry into right of repair (which has now closed for submissions and is expected to report its findings on October 29), has been focussing on e-waste, product stewardship, sustainable development and the development of the circular economy. Australia in some ways has been lagging behind in some jurisdictions in trying to think about unsustainable production and consumption, according to Rimmer.

Right-to-repair legislation could see some goods last longer rather than ending up in landfill.

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// Right to Repair

“The US sustainable development goals in particular have a very heavy emphasis on the need for more sustainable approach to the modern economy,” he said. “The EU has been pushing ahead with an ecodesign regime – France introduced a repairability index this year. “There has been a lot of questions from the Productivity commissioners about whether or not Australia should adopt a similar index. In Australia, the key champion of the right-to-repair has been the ACT attorney general, Shane Rattenbury, who is a Green. As well as being concerned about consumer rights and competition policy, he has been very interested in e-waste, product stewardship and sustainable development and he also says that is raises larger questions about taking actions in terms of climate change. In the news, there is a lot of debate about whether there should be better action on product stewardship. There are a number of organisations that were lamenting that law reform in that area has been slow. There were quite a few submissions from organisations focused on e-waste and recycling and the circular economy.” In the US, which often leads the way in these kinds of debates, President Joe Biden has appointed Lina Kahn to the Federal Trade Commission. Kahn has sometimes been described as an anti-trust lawyer. Recently, she convened the Federal Trade Commission, and they issued a new policy on enforcement priorities in relation to right-torepair restrictions. Khan and her colleagues – who are bipartisan in terms of appointees – believe they are going to act in relation to right-torepair restrictions under consumer law and competition policy in the United States, they are also looking at law reform in many different ways. They are also asking consumers to provide issues for them to consider in relation to repair restrictions. That is a major and significant development, according to Rimmer. A number of the tech developers have been alarmed at the approach of the Biden administration and the Trade Commission. It is noticeable there has been a lot of support from the technology community outside the manufacturers for those reforms. And how seriously do the tech companies take the idea of small, independent, third-party repairers fixing their gear? Very. Just ask Norwegian repairer Henrik Huseby, who owns a small business that specialises in refurbishing old iPhones with new screens. In 2020, Apple took him to the Norwegian Supreme Court

claiming he was using counterfeit Apple screens. He disagreed stating that he was using refurbished iPhone screens. He lost the case. “This is a big victory for companies like Apple who want to shut down small businesses like mine and control the prices of repair. They can claim that the cost of changing a screen will be the same as buying a new one, so there is no value in repairing. They are blocking their competition and creating a monopoly,” Huseby said at the time. However, right-to-repair advocates have an unlikely champion in the form of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. In a post on YouTube in June 2021, Wozniak stated he supported the ideals behind right-torepair. “I think the people behind it are doing the right thing,” he said. “We wouldn’t have had an Apple if I hadn’t grown up in an opentechnology world, an open electronics world. Back then, when you bought electronics – things like TVs and radios – every bit of the circuits and designs were included on paper with the product. It was totally open source.” He also doesn’t buy into the safety aspect of the vendors concerns. “If there is a part inside [the product] and you want to repair or replace that part – [and get it] cheaper, it is not going to blow anything up if it meets the specs. That is what engineering is all about – meeting the specs. Why stop the right-to-repair people? Look at the Apple II. It shipped with full schematics, designs and code listings. It was modifiable and expandable to the maximum. People figured out how to convert the display into having lower case characters. It was the only source of revenue for Apple for its first 10 years.” While Rimmer specialises in intellectual property, it is not just the minutiae of the law and how it should be applied that interests him. He has an altruistic bent. “The University of NSW has been doing a lot of work on the circular economy,” he said. “The NSW Government set up a network focussing on the circular economy. In some ways Australia needs to think about ways in which they can innovate sustainable production and consumption. “Personally, I think that it is really important that Australian consumers have the same sorts of rights and privileges that their US counterparts will have. I’m keen for Australia to keep pace with Biden’s developments in relation to the right-to-repair in the US.” iw

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Waste Sector Investment //

Capitalising on opportunity in a transforming waste sector By Chris McLean RAPID industry transformation can be tough on small businesses, but it can also create lucrative opportunities. In Australia’s changing waste sector, hundreds of small to medium businesses, often owned and run by families, make up as much as 60 per cent of the industry. These businesses will need sources of significant capital to keep pace with the new regulations, expectations, technologies and equipment required for modern waste management in a transforming industry. Despite these risks and challenges, some canny businesses are already profiting from the waste boom, selling to keen investors at unforeseen valuations. Australia’s waste market is undergoing change and growth. The transformation of Australia’s waste market is being driven by changes in the global market, including the China National Sword, and by our society’s ever-increasing awareness of the environmental challenges of processing waste. These forces have culminated in Australia banning the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres. Despite increased social awareness of key principles of a circular economy, metropolitan solid waste (MSW), commercial and industrial (C&I) and construction and demolition (C&D) waste continue to increase in volume along with population growth and economic activity. As demonstrated throughout the pandemic, when economic activity is forecast to decline, governments typically invest in infrastructure to maintain employment and stimulate economic growth, which also maintains growth in the overall waste streams. That is, while C&I volumes decline, C&D volumes pick up. In recycling alone, it’s estimated that an additional 645,000 tonnes will need to be processed domestically by 2024. PwC Australia estimates that this is the equivalent of nearly a third of all of Australia’s waste being collected today. For organic processing, a national target of diverting 80 per cent of organic waste away from landfill by 2030 will see an additional 4.1 million tonnes per year needing to be processed. PwC Australia analysis indicates that $3.5 to $4.2 billion 26

will need to be invested in new waste processing infrastructure to develop Australia’s onshore organic value chain to process at this capacity. With such unprecedented demand for environmentally responsible waste management, and with strong projections for ongoing growth in onshore waste processing, all segments of Australia’s waste sector will need to invest heavily in new infrastructure. Funds are the key to unlock growth. Growing a business and keeping pace with change requires capital. Small- to medium-sized enterprises involved in waste processing have typically accessed funds through reinvesting profits or borrowing. Borrowing often involves collateral against personal or family assets, which transfers business risks to the family and introduces risks of passing financial liabilities to the next generation. This approach, especially in the absence of a deep understanding of the project financing market, can inhibit the ability of small businesses to access the capital they urgently need for growth. An alternative option is to sell all or part of the business, capitalising on the current interest of prominent and emerging infrastructure investors in the waste sector. With large infrastructure funds and institutional investors having a need to deploy capital and promote environmental credentials, a compelling value proposition exists for well-capitalised funds to acquire a number of small to medium industry participants to develop an integrated waste processing business. A high-quality infrastructure asset with resilience across the business cycle, uniqueness of locations or limited operating licences, is likely to present an attractive risk profile for an infrastructure investor. Existing businesses with established waste management assets, long-term contracts and strong environmental credentials are well positioned to take advantage of these circumstances. They will have the upper hand on new market entrants, who face uncertain lead times for Environmental Protection Authority licences and land development approvals. However, existing market players shouldn’t take this prime position for granted. If they cannot access

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

the capital to invest in new waste processing infrastructure, they will miss the opportunity to take advantage of the market transformation and could be outgrown by their competitors. Simple measures can make a big difference. For small to medium businesses wishing to attract investment, these practical actions will increase the likelihood of success. Institutional investors will be looking for reassurance against the potential reputational risks involved in the waste sector – such as odour issues, fire risks, hazardous materials, contamination, and environmental management. Small waste businesses that invest in systems and processes and spend time formalising and documenting their governance arrangements will give institutional investors greater confidence. An investor will need to see that a business isn’t relying simply on its own informal track record of its historical processes and arrangements, even if these had been acceptable in the past. Just as the industry is changing, so too is the risk landscape. Comprehensive, well-documented governance records, policies and procedures will be expected. Documentation of all engagement with regulators, particularly the EPA, will be essential. It’s also important that all arrangements with other parties are formally documented. Verbal communications and handshake agreements may have served their purpose once, but in a modern

industry there is no substitute for solid, well-managed documentation. Another critical element will be well-developed financial reporting that clearly aligns to business risk and to infrastructure characteristics. Investors will be keen to understand which elements of the business activities are high risk or low risk, and how they match with revenues and costs. The best way to deliver this information will be through well-prepared management cost allocation reporting. Few investors will be motivated to navigate through opaque data; they’ll be looking for information that is adequately detailed, tells a clear story, and is presented to a high standard. Admittedly, for many small businesses, governance and financial information management may have developed in a rather ad hoc fashion over many years. These systems and processes are not revenue-generating activities so may not have been priorities for investment in the past. However, with a small financial investment and with the right advisor committed to a model of shared success, significant long-term value can be created. Ultimately, private investment will be the key to unlocking the transformation of Australia’s waste sector – and it will be to everyone’s benefit: industry players, investors, as well as our communities and environment long into the future. iw Chris McLean is a partner at PwC and specialises in integrated infrastructure. Borrowing often involves collateral against personal or family assets.

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Circular Economy //

Need to put circular economy into action and stop talking about it DARREN Thorpe is a fan of the circular economy. Having been in the industry for almost 40 years, he has seen it all, and knows that making sure Australia makes the most out of its waste in terms of reusing it, is a priority if the country wants to make the circular economy a reality. The CEO of Australian Paper Recovery (APR) started out in the industry 1984 with his relatives being instrumental in working with the Smorgon family and helping them start their paper mill in the 1960s. Smorgon closed the paper mill in September 1989 when it sold its corrugated box factories to Visy and to Amcor. Thorpe started his career with Smorgon as a wastepaper clerk and then progressed through to a regional buyer of material. The Smorgon business had no representation in country Victoria so that was his next port of call where he built up business in regional areas of the state. He then continued on to Southern Wastepaper as it was called back then, unit it became Visy. He started at Visy in October 1989 and worked with them for more than 12 years. He started off in regional areas and progressed to the regional sales manager and then Victoria state manager and quadrupled the profit per month from 1998 to 2000. He then took the opportunity to set up a greenfield site in WA for the company. It was designed to be set up so he could train and teach a local how to run it, with the plan being he would then return to the east coast. The first part worked out, but unfortunately, the second part didn’t, which resulted in Thorpe leaving Visy. “They advised me in May 2002 that they would bring me home but there would be no position available for me,” he said. “I finished with them on May 20th, 2002, and registered Australian Paper Recovery on May 21, 2002. “I didn’t know what I was going to do so when Visy told me, so I set up the company and decided to trade wastepaper on the export market. A lot of people knew me already from the 17.5 years in the industry. I contacted them and built a business. In the 28

first year we turned over $7.5 million, which was the foundation of where the business is today.” Not one to sit back and see what happens next, he thought for his fledgling company to have longevity, it needed to have a recycling processing facility. He opened the first recycling processing facility in August 2003 in Springvale, Victoria, and from there the company has progressed to having five sites in Melbourne.

He is purely all about sustainable recycling in a time where end markets locally and abroad are raising the quality expectation of these recovered waste streams along with the reduction of allowable contamination into these commodities. He is also at pains to point out that he is not anti-glass. In fact, he feels the exact opposite. It’s the issues it causes when mixed with other materials that is the problem. “Glass is very valuable resource.

ice cream containers – all have glass shards in them that you can’t get out. The result is that you limit the end market outlets for recyclable products you can approach due to glass shards” This is why he is happy that soon all the councils in Victoria will have the purple-lidded, glass-only bin. He found councils are a little reluctant to come on board, and residents have been harder to persuade, but they see all the long-term advantages with regards

However, mixed in with the other recyclables, it’s a massive contaminant,” he said. “A full bottle is not a problem. It can be pulled off the line but when it breaks – either by the householder when they are putting it in the bin, or when tipped into the truck by the compactor and then compacted in the truck – it splinters. All the glass shards get into all the other recyclables and resources, such as paper, cardboard, plastic and aluminium. Plastics, such as milk bottles, detergent bottles, yoghurt and

to being able to reuse resources – ie, not just wishing for a true circular economy, but actually having one. “Councils are beginning to realise that in order to have a circular economy, the quality of the waste material coming out of the bins has a direct impact on having ongoing outlets to receive this recovered material,” he said. “You just can’t wish cycle. Some residents in the midst of COVID last year we were putting full toilet systems in their bins. We were getting the base of lawnmowers

Mixing plastics and bottles is a big issue for companies like APR.

“As of today, our latest addition is our residential material recovery facility (MRF) in Truganina,” he said. “We got involved in that because the system has seen very little innovation over the years and the waste profile through the supply chain and end markets have changed so much, it was time for a processor like APR to introduce innovation into this side of the industry.” The facility in Truganina is the only one in the state – and he believes country – that doesn’t accept glass.

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// Circular Economy

because residents were saying ‘it’s metal, mate, you can recycle it’. The amount of wish cycling that was going on was crazy. The weirdest thing I saw online was a cow’s carcass out of Swan Valley Shire in WA. I don’t know how they managed to get it into the bin.” Thorpe believes that not only is education important, but those residents who have been around for a while need a change in mindset. The way the waste economy works is a lot different from what it was 25 years ago. “This is the challenge that we have,” he said. “Back in 1996, when they introduced the single-stream recycling scheme, there was not the packaging around that there is today. What we see is that we have been able to change that; and we are now investing in new technology that will be a solution for the soft plastics coming out of the MRF, which is the biggest contaminant we are working with. We estimate that 40 per cent of our waste is soft plastics and food packaging materials. Previously, glass shards were one of the biggest landfill contaminations but we have addressed this issue over four local councils with

our new MRF design.” And what about his wish list of changes he would like to see in the industry? First, he would like to see government doing more about educating the public. Although most state governments have been advertising and promoting about how to dispose of soft plastics, he does wonder if the message is getting through. “I followed a random load of waste from one our trucks to the landfill,” he said. “When it tipped the material out – there was 10.2 tonnes of it – visually it looked about 70 per cent, but it was probably closer to 50 per cent, was soft plastics. That is after 12 months of advertising on prime time and spending millions of dollars on educating residents to not put it in there. They are not listening. They are not accepting the change. I would find another solution.” Like almost everybody in the waste industry, one of his biggest bugbears is a familiar one – and something that he thinks needs addressing now. “We as a waste industry, in Victoria alone, captured taxes for the government from a landfill levy that

were instigated in 1996 to be put back into the recycling industry for infrastructure and innovation,” he said. “I believe that there can be more support by the Government to redirect more investment into the industry, which is derived from this landfill levy. This is especially for privately own companies who are not as capital rich as larger corporate entities but have a huge appetite and common goal to bring innovation to support the ongoing circular economy.” Finally, Thorpe has a different take on the single-use plastic problem. Again, it comes down to education. He believes that it is an amazing resource and feels that the easy option is to ban it. He believes industry is looking at the problem the wrong way. “I can turn around now, take that plastic bag, send it to Malaysia and turn it into builders’ film, which is a required resource,” he said. “We currently recycle about 800 tonnes a month of soft plastics that are pre-consumed/post-industrial that go over to Malaysia and turned into builders’ film. We import 100,000 rolls a year and have been doing that for the past 12 years as a diverse

part of our business. APR is nearly ready to announce another project to the market that introduces innovative technology where soft plastic currently going to landfill (not plastic recovered going to recycling end markets such as mentioned before) actually has an ongoing application in line with what the principals of a circular economy are supposed to be about, according to Thorpe. It is a collective project between industry, universities and government. Same as the advances around new MRF practices to remove glass from co-mingle bins, this innovation will address renewed life for all single use plastic going to landfill, which has been a discussion point when speaking about circular economy models. “Stay tuned for further updates coming in the next six months about this project,” said Thorpe. “The timing and opportunity are now to really reset the old mind set in the industry and start looking outside the box to embrace circular economy practices, which we can better utilise our waste as a resource and not one to use it once and bury it in the ground.” iw

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Waste Solutions //

Underground waste system first for Australian CBD WHEN the Sunshine Coast Council in Queensland decided to make the town of Maroochydore the main centre of the region, it offered up an opportunity to build a CBD with smart technology. One of the key infrastructure outcomes was an underground automated waste collection system, which was developed in Sweden in 1966. According to the Sunshine Coast Council’s group executive for customer engagement and planning services, James Ruprai, the system was a great fit when making Maroochydore a smart city. It also has many other benefits. “Looking at this from a sustainability and amenity perspective, council was aiming for Maroochydore to be Australia’s most sustainable region,” he said. “The system and the proof-inconcept, particularly in places like Europe, have shown that it increases recycling and reduces waste to

landfill. It also reduces the amount of trucks reversing through the CBD environments at 5am in the morning to service commercial developments.” Ruprai knows that Maroochydore’s CBD being started from scratch has made the installation a lot easier. It also helps that this type of system is ideal for high-density living environments, which will be at the core of the city’s centre. “A number of different compounding benefits come out of running a system like this,” he said. “Having it as part of the city’s foundation probably allowed us to look at implementing it at a much lower cost than would typical if we were trying to retrofit this into an existing CBD outfit. The thing that makes the system work in Maroochydore is we are building it from a blank canvas. “If you looked at trying to roll this out in a suburban environment, it would be a much larger cost per

dwelling because there is a bigger expanse. Effectively, the range of infrastructure that would be required to service per capita would be too high.” As well as commercial outlets, the city is planning for up to 4,000 apartment-style dwellings through the city. The pipe network connects to a single transfer station where the waste is sorted and then repurposed or sent a landfill. Scott Mackie from Envac, the company that installed the system, works as an operations manager and is based at the transfer station where the waste arrives after it has been sent through the system. The install was straight forward, he said – it helped that the pipes were being laid as all the other utilities were being installed in the area. “It’s pretty standard steel pipe that goes in straight lines,” he said. “The bends are a bit different because the waste doesn’t go around

a bend as nicely as liquid, water or gas. But that’s not such a big deal. The bends are a special product that have a greater radius than other parts of the pipe work. The network itself got installed 2.2-metre underground in line with the roads. “That installation went reasonably smoothly. It didn’t take that long to lay the pipes. The city centre in Maroochydore kicked off construction in 2016 and started pipe install in 2017 and finished it in 2018.” How does the system work? According to Mackie, 90 per cent of the day the system is not running, and the pipe sits static. At the bottom of each bin is a trap door that is shut most of the time. The waste builds up as people throw in rubbish. Then, at predefined intervals, the trap opens, the vacuum is run, and any waste will fall into the pipe and be sucked away at high speed back to the centre. The system is run off a number of very high

The station where the waste is collected is the size of a basketball court and is two storeys high.

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// Waste Solutions

kilowatt engines, effectively creating a limit in the pressurisation that can occur through the pipe network. It can suck up to 6.5km away from the transfer station, at speeds up to 70km per hour. “There is a collection cycle. There are 22 litter bins in public places and there are some in one of the buildings that has been built,” said Mackie. “We recycle valves around that place so at any one time waste is dropping from one point for 10 seconds, then it shuts so that everything in there has had time to go down and be taken away. Ten seconds later, the same thing happens with the next one down the line. Over about a 15-minute period, we draw all the waste away from those inlets.” What happens if waste gets stuck in one of the pipes? Nothing like that has happened so far, said Mackie, although that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been minor teething issues. “There have been no issues yet with rubbish getting stuck,” he said. “We are working with the restaurants that have the commercial inlets in the building that surround the precinct that are using rubbish bags that are too big to fit in. They are getting stuck at the top of the bin rather than in the pipe. However, once waste gets into the pipe and gets moving, it tends to keep going. It’s more likely to get stuck at the top or down around where it goes around the first vertical to the horizontal part of the pipe, but that hasn’t happened.” “The real brilliance comes in the ability to shut off parts of the pipe network so that it can target certain areas and precincts. This helps with the efficiency of gaining the vacuum suction that is needed to expand what is beyond what is there already,” said Ruprai. And what about cleaning and maintenance? How are those aspects handled? “It doesn’t need a lot of cleaning,” said Mackie. “All the waste and piping are under vacuum, and any odours get taken away. I certainly wouldn’t want to eat off the pipe, but it’s not for public consumption so it doesn’t matter. “We are constantly maintaining the system. At this stage, everything is brand-spanking new. There are things that are just not quite right, so we are tweaking them. We have two guys who are full time maintaining the system. Because it has to run seven days a week, every day of the year, we needed two people. We have weekly, monthly and

quarterly maintenance.” The collection station at the end of the line is reasonably big. It is two storeys high and is about as big as a basketball court. The general waste goes into landfill, while the mixed recyclables go into the mix recyclables facility at Nambour. Currently, the system is being underutilised as none of the residential buildings have come online yet, while only a few of the commercial blocks have been completed. “We are taking the volumes from one completed building at the moment and 22 public bins,” said Mackie. “We’re under half a tonne a day of general waste at the moment and a few cubes of recyclables. It is a bit of a soft start, but the facility will be able to take in the order of 10-tonnes a week when it is fully developed. At that stage there will be 50 commercial buildings and residential apartment towers. It’s going to be a lot bigger than it is now.” While there is the initial cost to install, Ruprai thinks over time, it will pay for itself. The installation is debt funded and is part of an inter-generational equity program. The debt funding has paid for the initial outlay of capital, which has been approximately $21 million for the truncated infrastructure across the site. “There’s been some slight cost increases due to having to deal with acid/salt-based soils and some of the environmental constraints, but as the program rolls out effectively that debt funding continues,” said Ruprai. “Over the life of the system, the debt funding arrangement rolls into utility charges as the CBD continues to evolve and more residential and commercial residences come online. “The initial modelling has a cost per utility charge is slightly more expensive than you would see for a traditional waste collection/ kerbside system. I’d expect over time, and especially as more users come onboard, that’ll become more efficient, and we’ll see those costs taper off.” Even though it seems futuristic for an old product, Ruprai said that suburban areas shouldn’t get too excited, or waste collectors to worried, about such a system coming to their area anytime soon. As mentioned, he said it is more suited for high-density living and would probably be cost-prohibitive for current suburban areas or those about to be developed. “We don’t have any firm plans to expand the system beyond the

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

There are 22 public bins scattered throughout the Maroochydore CBD.

Maroochydore site at this time. As that further develops, we will be open to looking at what other options are available,” he said. “From our perspective, it hasn’t shifted anything from the kerbside collection point of view.

“It is a new thing. There are no jobs lost. There are no contractual arrangements impinged upon due to this system being implemented. It’s a new and innovative way of looking at how to manage waste in a highdensity area.” iw

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Opinion //

What would happen if the Coalition let the market do its thing on emissions? By Mike Ritchie, MRA Consulting Group EVERY credible economist has said that a universal price on carbon is the most efficient economic mechanism to drive down Australia’s emissions. It allows the market to make rational price decisions without the dead hand of government intervening. That is exactly what the Federal Liberal/National coalition has preached for decades. Let the market efficiently allocate resources according to supply and demand. The role of governments is to set the boundaries and the speed and let the market do the allocation. How would government know if soil carbon sequestration is a better and safer bet, than say electric vehicle charging stations, in terms of future investment and risk? How does a committee in Canberra decide that savanna burning in the NT will sequester more tonnes than better recycling in Sydney? They do not have the information required for anyone to make an informed decision on these issues. There are too many options with unknown risks for government bureaucrats to make informed decisions. That is the power of the market. Private money takes risks. Some will be winners. Others will be losers. Overall, innovation happens at the least cost to society. But in the absence of a carbon price there is no proper mechanism for allocating limited capital. No way for private companies to make sensible allocations of capital. It is left to committees in Canberra to decide which projects obtain funding under grants, or can register projects to obtain ACCUs (Australian Carbon Credit Units). Government officers are weighing the price and risk of individual projects with limited information. Why would the government take this risk? That is what the market is good at. But the market cannot function 32

without the right price signals. It cannot allocate risk and reward without a price. With carbon dioxide (along with all other greenhouse gases including methane and nitrous oxide) currently free (you and I can emit as much as we like for nothing), what is the incentive to reduce emissions, unless the government pays you to do it? That is our current system. We know the market will drive down emissions with a price signal. We had two years of a carbon price under the Gillard Government. At $23/t, emissions fell by around 7 per cent. A recent study by the Australian Institute confirms that the carbon price did reduce emissions. In the figure below, with data put together by the Australia Institute with Department of Industry, the red part of the line represents the time when the carbon price was in place. Sure, Julia Gillard could have introduced it with more transparency and finesse, but that is a different story.

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Yet, there are things the Morrison Government could do without completely retreating on its “No carbon tax” policy. The Biden Government, using a 3 per cent discount rate, international modelling and climate change science, announced that the USA will use a price of US$51 per tonne CO2-e to reflect the social costs of carbon. That figure is used in all cost-benefit evaluations of government projects. Clearly high emitting projects will be at a competitive disadvantage. That makes projects that reduce emissions even more competitive. It only applies to evaluation of government funded projects. The Australian Federal Government could introduce a carbon shadow price tomorrow on all of its project evaluations. This would not frustrate its commitment to no carbon tax. It simply weights government activities towards reducing emissions rather than ignoring them. It is totally in line with Coalition policy.

But wait. There is more. The EU is now considering a carbon border adjustment mechanism. This will effectively tax products imported from countries that do not have a carbon price. It is designed to protect EU businesses who do have to price carbon from being out-competed by businesses in countries (such as Australia) who do not have a carbon price. For example, Australian wine exports to Europe will bear a carbon tax equivalent when they are sold in EU. According to the AFT , it is possible that the US, Britain and potentially even China will get behind such a plan. It is time Australia started down the carbon pricing road. Even a shadow price now would signal to the world that we are starting to move. It is time to let the market do what it does best. Innovate and allocate. Government needs to set the boundaries and jump start the process with carbon pricing (shadow or real or both). iw

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

// Opinion

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Metal Recycling //

Exports of unprocessed steel scrap need to stop By Rose Read THE scrap metal industry has long been the recycling ‘poster’ child in Australia. With a recycling rate of 90 per cent in 2018-19 according to the 2020 National Waste Report, it outperforms any other material category. This high level of recycling in Australia would not be possible without the millions of dollars invested by the scrap and steel industry into building infrastructure across the country to collect, sort, shred, and process scrap metal. In 2018-19, more than 5.6 million tonnes, or 223 kg per capita, of metal scrap was generated. The time has come to ban the export

of unprocessed steel scrap, with both the Federal and State Governments lack of leadership undermining the future of the Australian scrap metal recycling industry and domestic steel manufacturing. Australia has implemented a timetable that sees the banning of exports of waste glass, plastics, tyres, and paper and cardboard complete by 1 July 2024, and yet the banning of unprocessed scrap metal is not on the table and should be. We are seeing unprocessed steel scrap such as motor vehicles and whitegoods that still contain waste glass, tyres and plastics being exported to countries that often fail to have the appropriate environmental standards in place, resulting in a net

negative environmental impact. This Australian generated, unprocessed waste can cause harm to the local receiving environment and at the same time is undermining the future of the Australian scrap metal recycling and steel industries, where more than enough domestic processing capacity has been invested by industry. In recent times, Australia’s scrap industry has had to supplement its supply to Australian steel mills with imported scrap. At the same time, Australia has been exporting an average of 2.39 million tonnes of scrap metal per annum from 2017 to 2021 according to data from the Department of Agriculture, Water and Environment (DAWE). Worryingly,

the percentage of unprocessed steel scrap within this has continued to expand. Further complicating the issue is the industry’s regulatory environment. The current scrap metal industry is regulated by states and territories in what can only be described as a complex and largely ineffective regulatory system that provides oversight to the activities of the very few, allowing many dealers in scrap to operate outside current environmental laws. Australian scrap metal regulatory environment

The table below provides a snapshot of the state and territory regulatory environment and the issues across

STATE/ TERRITORY

MAIN ACT/S

ISSUES AND IMPACTS

QLD

Queensland Environment Protection Act 1994

The Queensland Environment Protection Act 1994 is administered by the Department of Environment and Science (DES) and the Act has been subject to several changes through EPA licencing, resulting in three different types of Environmentally Relevant Activities licences with varying thresholds. The Queensland Second Hand Dealers & Pawnbrokers Act 2003 is administered by the Department of Fair Trading, which requires any person carrying out a business dealing in scrap metal to be registered as a second-hand dealer. There is little evidence of compliance inspections or enforcement activity.

Queensland Second Hand Dealers & Pawnbrokers Act 2003 NSW

NSW Protection of the Environment Operations (POEO) NSW Scrap Metal Industry Act 2016 Act 1997 NSW Motor Dealers & Repairers Act 2013

The POEO requires an Environmental Protection License (EPL) to be held for a site processing more than 30,000 TPA of scrap metal. Unlicenced facilities that fall under this threshold are over-represented in the number of environmental incidents that occur. NSW Scrap Metal Industry Act 2016 Act 1997 requires any person carrying out a scrap metal recycling business, as described by the Act and Regulations, to register with the NSW Police. Local Police Area Commands are responsible for enforcement. Many organisations that buy scrap cars do not appear to be registered. Rather, they are buying scrap ‘cars’ legally under the Motor Dealers & Repairers Act and in doing so avoiding any scrap metal environmental regulations and obligations. Fire & Rescue NSW Facilities Guidelines require metal recyclers to meet prescribed stockpile and material separation protocols.

Fire + Rescue NSW Fire Safety in Waste Facilities Guidelines 2019 VIC

Victorian Environment Protection Act 2017 Victoria Pawnbrokers & Second Hand Dealers Act 1989

Significant changes to the Victorian Environment Protection Act & Regulations took effect from 1 July 2021 and are yet to be fully understood across the metal recycling industry. EPA licensing, approval and registration regimes have changed with different requirements depending on size of operation. Unlicensed organisations are buying scrap cars to recover parts. The cars are then stripped or baled and exported unprocessed. Very little EPA compliance inspections or enforcement activity.

SA Environment Protection Act 1993

The Act prescribes licensing requirements for premises on which 100 tonnes or more each year of scrap metal is recovered or any amount of scrap metal that is fragmented. Vehicles transporting the waste must also be licenced. EPA compliance and enforcement is not particularly overt and smaller operators are operating outside the requirements.

WA Environment Protection Act 1986

Different licences are required depending on the size and operation. While there are more than 200 scrap metal facilities in WA only six are licenced under Environmental Protection Regulations Schedule 1 Clause 47. The WA Pawnbrokers & Second Hand Dealers Regulations 1996 was amended in August 2020 to require any person carrying out a business dealing in scrap copper and copper alloys (including bronze and brass) to hold a Second Hand Dealers Licence. There is little evidence of compliance inspections, and many scrap metal dealers are not licensed

WA Pawnbrokers & Second Hand Dealers Act 1994 NT

NT Environment Protection Act 2019

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The Act and Regulations require licensing for scrap metal recycling facilities if they handle prescribed wastes such as batteries and other lead-based materials. Waste tracking is required for listed wastes. Limited EPA resources for compliance and enforcement. Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

// Metal Recycling

Scrap metal produces a lot less carbon than using virgin ore.

Australia’s scrap metal industry. In addition to the complexities that exist in regulating the industry, the global outlook is that demand for steel is expected to rise, most of which is being produced using virgin ore leading to greater carbon emissions. Steel generates 7 per cent of global carbon-dioxide emissions related to energy consumption, more than any other industrial sector, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). With demand for steel projected to rise, the IEA says the industry’s emissions need to halve by 2050 for the world to hit global climate goals. On average, almost two tonnes of carbon dioxide are emitted for every tonne of steel produced from virgin ore. By comparison, a tonne of steel produced from scrap produces just 25 per cent of the emissions made from virgin ore, making the use of scrap pivotal in reducing the carbon intensity of steel making. The carbon emission reduction benefits of substituting virgin ore with ferrous scrap are significant and more steel makers are either switching to electric arc furnace technology that relies on melting scrap metal only, or substituting hot metal from blast furnaces with more scrap metal to make new steel. There is definitely a move to reduce emissions by using scrap metal as well as techniques such as replacing coal with hydrogen. While initially more costly, the pursuit of green steel sees not only a reduction in energy use, but more use of renewable energy is helping to achieve net zero emissions by 2050,

which is in line with the International Energy Agency’s roadmap for the global energy sector. Australia’s steel industry also recognises there are clear greenhouse benefits, with BlueScope’s demand for ferrous scrap in NSW trebling over the past 10 years. There are several potential pathways to manufacture greener steel. Increasing scrap content in existing primary and secondary steelmaking facilities is an immediate step the steel industry can take as they move towards low carbon green steel while hydrogen technology is being developed. Moving to green steel presents an enormous opportunity for Australia to create jobs, boost exports and help tackle climate change. However, if the scrap metal industry is to support the steel industry’s transition to green steel by supplying more ferrous scrap, several national and state regulatory changes must happen to keep ferrous scrap in Australia. This includes the federal government banning the export of unprocessed steel scrap; state governments requiring all operators dealing with scrap to be licensed – including car wrecking operations; and waiving landfill levies on residual wastes from legitimate scrap shredding activities. Exporting unprocessed steel scrap metal not only puts receiving countries’ environments at risk but also equates to exporting carbon abatement for Australian steel producers.

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Hazardous Waste //

Solving commercial-inconfidence challenges when tracking hazardous waste By Alex Serpo Executive Officer, VWMA HAZARDOUS waste - it’s a health risk, a destructive contaminant in recycling, and an expensive material to process. In Victoria, it’s also subject to a huge landfill levy of $250 per tonne. Due to its cost and complexity, there has been big incentives for those unwilling to pay the levy to illegally dump material, resulting in stockpiles and hazardous dump sites. While the most high-profile, illegal dump site was the Bradbury site at Campbellfield, which burnt to the ground in April 2019, there have been many smaller examples. The Bradbury’s accident resulted in a multi-milliondollar taxpayer-funded cleanup. Beyond the immediate costs, it also undermined the legitimate industry, which is working hard to process the material safely and to a high environmental standard. To solve this issue, Victoria is the first Australian jurisdiction to implement digital tracking for hazardous waste. Broadly, this is a welcome development. Using an application called ‘Waste Tracker’ and an online portal, the new system tracks hazardous waste from source to processing facility in real-time. Victoria has stepped into the digital arena to implement a necessary system. The state has offered to be a proving ground for the rest of Australia’s jurisdictions to eventually follow, all of which are still using paper-based systems. However, like any new system, Waste Tracker has been subject to growing pains, and industry is now feeling this. The state government and industry have been working hard to remove bugs, with the system improving weekby-week since it went live and became mandatory on 1 July. The process of iterative improvement has revealed a critical challenge for digital waste tracking. This challenge is protecting important commercial-in-confidence information while maintaining transparency. Fundamentally, Waste Tracker is designed to create transparency right 36

The Waste Tracker system is designed to track waste from its source to the processing facility.

“Victoria has stepped into the digital arena to implement a necessary system. The state has offered to be a proving ground for the rest of Australia’s jurisdictions to eventually follow, all of which are still using paper-based systems.” across the supply chain – from the producer, the transporter through to the final destination for the material – with all this information visible to all stakeholders in the system. The system was designed this way to ensure that processors have visibility of where the material is sourced from in order to resolve contamination challenges, and to ensure tracking of liability if something goes wrong. Each party in the supply chain has a responsibility; the producer must accurately characterise their waste; the transporter must move it safely and to a lawful place; and the processor must ensure safe disposal or recovery of the material. This system was designed to be self-policing by linking each part of the supply chain together, in a similar manner to chain of responsibility

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

for heavy vehicles. Unfortunately, this regulatory design creates an unintended negative consequence. This system potentially leaks commercial information from waste collection contractors to larger companies that process waste, who are their competitors. In other words, when waste producers put their details into the tracking system, these details are passed onto the waste processor, even if they are not their customer. This prevents waste transport companies from keeping their customer lists strictly confidential. Fundamentally, there is a contradiction between accountability/ transparency across the supply chain and maintaining critical commercial confidence, which is important to ensure diversity and competition in

the marketplace. In Victoria, the EPA, DELWP must find a solution to this challenge, or risk their system being knocked down under competition laws. After members brought this issue to our attention, the VWMA has been working with the EPA and the DELWP to develop a solution. While the final fix is yet to be determined, fundamental information needs to be carefully funneled through the system so that only the EPA has total visibility, and that contractors can work to collect waste without the risk of losing their customer lists. In regard to other stakeholders, the VWMA is arguing for information sharing that excludes all customer details. Information should only be shared when it is necessary for environmental compliance across the entire supply chain. Once a solution is found, Victoria’s model of digital waste tracking can be an example to other jurisdictions, creating a nationally harmonious hazardous waste tracking system to protect workers, the community and the environment. iw

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Waste Innovation //

Those who innovate first will get a competitive advantage By Dr Karl Baltpurvins THE Federal Government has enacted elements of the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act 2020 (the Act) ensuring Australia takes responsibility for its waste for generations to come. The Act provides a national framework to manage waste and recycling across Australia. It has been developed to align with seven key goals of the Australian Waste Management Plan: • Ban the export of waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres. • Reduce total waste generated in Australia by 10 per cent per person by 2030. • An 80 per cent average recovery rate from all waste streams by 2030. • Increase the use of recycled content by governments and industry. • Phase out problematic and unnecessary plastics by 2025. • Halve the amount of organic waste sent to landfill by 2030. • Make comprehensive, economy-wide and timely data publicly available to support better consumer, investment and policy decisions. It is hoped that the reforms introduced in the Act will lead to increased recycling and remanufacturing of waste materials, which will transform our industry and boost jobs. To illustrate this point, the waste export ban is expected to see the Australian economy generate $1.5 billion in additional economic activity over the next 20 years. If Australia is to have a hope to achieve these goals, some other critical areas require support including: • diversion of landfill levies to support investment in the recycling sector; • continued local, state and federal funding; • development of reliable markets for waste-derived products; • acceptance of waste-to-energy as part of Australia’s arsenal of landfill diversion technologies; • improvement in environmental planning process to facilitate the development of new resource recovery operations; • expansion of product stewardship schemes; • implementation of risk-based frameworks to facilitate the beneficial reuse of waste; • increased investment in research 38

and development and most notably commercialisation to realise tangible innovation; and • active development of infrastructure to cater for emerging waste types and contaminants. I have no doubt the key to success lies in Australia’s ability to reinvent the sector through tangible innovation. This means we will have to not just invest in research and development programs to drive innovation, but carefully support innovation through all stages of commercialisation. I often see good innovative technologies fail at the point of commercialisation. Fundamentally, the goal of innovation is to provide organisations with a competitive advantage within the market in which they operate. In the waste management and resource recovery sectors, this is typically focussed on cost reduction. However, other areas such as sustainability and the customer experience can also provide differentiation. The key is to understand what your customers want and also what factors drive the market (e.g., landfill levies). For the waste industry, the market is going through unparalleled change, particularly driven by the export bans, which has upset the recycling equilibria around the world. In this context, the goal of innovation in the waste management sector should logically be focussed on developing domestic resource recovery solutions. Ultimately, the organisations that innovate will obtain a competitive advantage by reducing their costs but also achieving a sustainable future. Innovation in the waste management and resource recovery sector requires the sector to consider not only the future drivers of waste generation in Australia, but the world. Most importantly, we need to consider the drivers in the economy and what impact these will have in the future state. For example, if you consider the rapid adoption of technology, whether it be an iPhone or flat screen TV, it is fairly predictable that the volume of these wastes will generate in line with the market expansion. Now what about emerging wastes? One excellent example is the adoption of electric vehicles. These vehicles all need reliable energy storage in the

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

Australia needs to develop domestic resource recovery solutions to its waste issues.

form of batteries such as Lithium-Ion Batteries. Batteries all have a lifetime where they lose efficiency and need to be safely recycled. Although Australia has recently approved a product stewardship scheme for batteries, this doesn’t include those generated from electric vehicles as there is a train of thought that business will solve that problem through R&D and innovation. This may well prove to be the case, but at present there is only a handful of brave and innovative SMEs paving the way with limited support. Given the potential of this sector, one would think that the support would be more focussed in this regard. The other consideration for the sector is the prevalence of emerging contaminants. An example are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These chemicals are persistent in the environment and in the human body – meaning they don’t break down and they can accumulate over time. Emerging contaminants such as PFAS are starting to raise the heads through the waste management and resource recovery sector. We need to ensure that our sector is robust and can accommodate for the rapidly changing landscape, or we jeopardise achieving the above-mentioned goals, particularly the 80 per cent landfill diversion target by 2030. The key to innovation is to invest at the right time. If you invest too early you run the risk of not obtaining a reasonable return on your investment; too late and you simply fall behind your competitors. As a country, we need to have long-term vision and an investment horizon (often 10 + years) that supports us in realising this vision. There is also a significant

need for government, at all levels, to support innovation in the sector. This can include providing innovation funding, product stewardship schemes, landfill levies (and bans), as well as ensuring that the planning process supports rather than hinders investment. It is clear that the Australian population expects the industry and government to uphold environmental and sustainability standards. Whether it be the illegal export of e-waste to the developing world, or banning single-use plastic bags in our supermarkets, the community is driving social change. The waste sector has always shown itself to be adaptable to change with the constant evolution of the market. However, there is no doubt that the current challenges we face in Australia will require more intensive investment in innovation, infrastructure and technology. This type of investment requires strong government policy making, so that the industry has confidence that the investment will provide a reasonable return on capital over the lifetime of the investment. For this to occur, there needs to be a strong alignment with the waste management industry and policy makers so that the investment risks are specifically addressed. Executed well, Australia will join other leading nations in developing a sustainable future including the development of a robust circular economy. Executed poorly, and we will see major stockpiles of waste and a deterioration in social sentiment towards recycling. Dr Karl Baltpurvins is the managing director of Entech Solutions. iw

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

// Thought Leadership

Education important in moving ahead with reusing materials “GROWING up we put everything in a garbage bin, garbos came, and took it away into landfill. Life was simple back then. The only recycling I did was crawl around a few new construction sites as a kid and pick up some coke and Fanta bottles and get my 5 cents or 10 cents and buy some lollies with it. That was how life was then.” Cleanaway’s COO Brendan Gill also remembers going to the local tip with his father and throwing all their rubbish into the local landfill at no cost – nothing was sorted, everything went in the one place. Then there was the backyard incinerator that was the staple of many Australian urban and rural households. It was a quick way to get rid of rubbish – he even remembers the funny colours plastic made as it melted under the assault of heat from the fire. Those days are long gone but Gill also believes that we are still a long way from where we want to be. Gill was due to speak at the Australian Waste Recycling Expo (AWRE) event in July but it was cancelled due to COVID-19. He was to talk about the challenges faced by FOGO, plastics and textiles in the circular economy. However, he doesn’t need an audience to get across his message – and passion – about where Australia, and more importantly its inhabitants, need to be in order to keep up with Europe in terms of getting a sustainable circular economy up and running. “Society’s resources are finite, yet we are a disposable society,” he said. “When I think about everything that goes into a landfill nowadays, pretty much everything can have a better use than burying it in the ground. If that happens it will just decompose, and depending on the nature of the material, it will produce methane. As most people in the industry know, methane is about 30 times more potent in terms of being a greenhouse gas, than carbon dioxide. “We’ve made some improvements but there is still a lot of stuff in those garbage bins that can be recycled and reused that is going to landfill. What does it take to fix? I think it starts with households and businesses to take ownership and stewardship of their waste. That means sorting it. There are no technologies that can sort every possible waste stream.”

He believes the country needs the generators of waste to do some of the sorting into green and food organics. “We can put them into one bin and turn them into valuable composts. We generally have lousy soil in Australia, so we can renew soils,” he said. “The challenge with FOGO is to get it in markets. While we collect a lot of green material and we have to clean it all up, not everybody runs a reasonable household like you and I. There is all sorts of stuff in those bins. I was at a processing facility recently and I asked one of the workers what was the most interesting thing they’d found in the past month. It was a sheep’s head.” One of the biggest challenges is education, he said. Some people are

recycling first started, there was your general waste bin, plus a 20-litre container bin. Today, most councils have a minimum of three bins, with a fourth on the horizon, and there might even more happening si milar to some countries in Europe. However, it is not only the number of bins that might be changing. Councils are realising that all waste is not created equal. “We have just been told that our general waste bin will no longer be collected weekly,” said Gill. “We have been given a year’s notice that it will be collected fortnightly. Our FOGO bin will be collected weekly. That’s because the biggest component of household waste, by type, is food.” On the bureaucracy front, Gill

The backyard incinerator is from a time when all rubbish was thrown away or burned.

ignorant of what it takes to make sure that the different wastes are put in the correct streams. Then there is the impression from the public that maybe it isn’t their job to make sure waste is sorted into the various bins. “I saw a comment on a social media site recently where the poster said, ‘why should we have to do all the recycling at our homes and in our bins? It’s the waste company’s job to do that. I pay rates, why should I have to go and sort the bins out for these people? All you are doing is the waste company’s jobs for them’,” said Gill. “I think that is a small-minded mentality. If they didn’t do it, and you still want it sorted, then the companies will have to pay people to do it. That means rates are going to go up.” And the landscape is changing all the time. Most people remember when

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

believes both the federal and state governments need to step up to the plate more in terms of assisting waste companies find markets for recycled products. Cleanaway, along with other waste management enterprises, is proactive, however a little bit of help would be good. “We need to have end markets for these recycled materials. It is a priority,” he said. “Government needs to show leadership to companies. I’m involved in a lot in plastics at the moment. We have a joint venture with Asahi Beverages and Pact Group with a plant being built in Albury. It will take about 1 billion bottles. Coke has joined us for another plant we will probably build in Victoria. That plant will process about 1 billion bottles, too, but we need an end market. We need end consumers wanting

to buy water bottles made out of recycled material.” And while Gill is glad that the joint venture will do a lot to get the number of empties out of the waterways, playgrounds and parks, he believes that still more needs to be done. “One billion bottles are drop in the ocean,” he said. “About 10 per cent of them. It all helps in terms of collecting it. It’s a resource. To replace that plastic – it is an oil-based product – you eventually have to drill more oil wells. If you have it, why not use it? If you have absolutely no better user for something, and it has some calorific value, then burn it.” But isn’t burning it just as bad? Not if you use energy-from-waste (EfW) technology, said Gill. To the uninitiated, an energy-from-waste plant doesn’t sound too appealing in terms of negative impacts on the environment. EfW plants don’t come cheap. Those within the industry know how they work, but again, to Gill it is all about educating the naysayers. Not only are energy-from-waste plants a good idea, they have many strings to their bow. “They’re not what you might think they are in terms of being like an incinerator – nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “They are hi-tech plants. We are proposing one for Sydney out at Eastern Creek. It will cost about $700 million to build but the emissions out of that would be lower than the lowest European emissions today. A colleague said to me that the amount of emissions and nasty stuff is the equivalent of six prime movers running down the freeway for the day. “You get more emissions than that taking waste down to landfills, but with this method you also get power out of the deal.” Also, there are certain things that can’t be recycled or burned, but if they go through the EfW process, they will eventually have another use. “If you put a broken plate in your rubbish bin, it won’t burn. It can’t be recycled,” said Gill. “However, if you put it through the EfW plant it’ll end up as bottom ash, which you can then put into pavers, roads, bricks and whatever else. At the end of the day the principles are all the same – try and reuse if you can. Don’t go and buy more than you need.” iw

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Regulations //

New Victorian EPA rules to come down hard on soil contamination By Dale Smith NEW environmental legislation in Victoria has significantly shifted the regime of risk associated with soil containing asbestos, PFAS and other chemicals on major property and infrastructure projects, which could see developers and contractors fined and slapped with multi-million-dollar clean-up bills. Amendments to the Environment Protection Act (2017) that came into effect on 1 July 2021 have replaced the old system that governed liability for polluted soil and given the Victorian Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) new powers to enforce compliance across the sector. As a result, landholders, property developers, contractors, subcontractors and third parties can be held to significantly higher levels of accountability for actions that are harmful to the environment or community. On top of that, their liability now extends for decades beyond their direct involvement with the project in question. Rather than the end-user being saddled with rectification costs, the new regime transfers the lion’s share of liability to parties involved in the delivery of new residential communities, apartments and townhouse developments, commercial and industrial sites, as well as major road, rail and other governmenttendered infrastructure projects. Further, this liability extends well beyond the design, construction and commissioning of these assets, with the new legislation

granting the EPA powers to impose multi-million-dollar fines on individuals and organisations responsible for environmentally destructive practices, such as soil contamination. The environmental watchdog still carries the historical legacy of multimillion-dollar clean-up bills from decades of chemical contamination of soil across Greater Melbourne. However, the agency’s ultimate focus remains the proactive protection of the environment and human health. These regulatory changes make it essential that all parties active in land-based development undertake appropriate due diligence to identify risk as related to the presence of contaminated soil. Understanding the extent of the contamination, if any, is the first step toward the implementation of appropriate, proactive soil remediation systems on site prior to the commencement of works. For many of these operators, acting early could be the difference between a healthy business balance sheet and extensive post-construction remediation costs, including relocation and cartage of contaminated soil, legal fees, reputational damage and a seven-figure fine. For many operators, these unforeseen additional costs could prove fatal. Importantly, the reforms are expected to create better economic, environmental and community outcomes for Melbourne and Victoria as the city and state continue to grow. However, a lack of general understanding and public resources around the complex issue of

soil contamination means calling in the professionals to advise and assist is ideal. The rules offer greater clarity around the apportionment of responsibility for environmentally harmful actions during the delivery of major projects and, while they are still in their infancy and yet to be tested in the courts, should give developers and contractors the push they need to engage qualified environmental consultants early in the life of the project. Given the changes, developers and contractors with active projects on land of which they are unsure of contamination levels should seek expert advice. Ideally, engagement should occur at the commencement of scoping and design works. If possible, developers should engage expert advice prior to the appointment of the project delivery team and contractors should ensure engagement has taken place prior to the release of tenders for government-funded infrastructure projects. However, even on projects that are well into the design phase, or have commenced construction, it’s never too late to act. Early involvement of soil contamination experts will identify any additional costs associated with remediation works and, for the majority of projects, this cost can be built into the overall cost of the project during the tendering process, meaning no surprises and no court battles, legal fees or project delays.

The EPA is proactive of protecting human health.

Greater clarity and a well-defined framework for shared risk also lays the footings for a more collaborative approach to infrastructure delivery between governments and infrastructure providers, helping maximise value for clients, contractors and communities. Getting on the front foot and getting help setting out a clear plan is the best way to tackle uncertainty and risk. In most cases, only simple and relatively inexpensive works are required to solve the problem. It’s important to remember that any additional layer of cost identified during soil testing isn’t necessarily due today or tomorrow: the earlier businesses understand the situation, the more scope they have to allocate budget and amortise costs over the short, medium and long-term. Dale Smith is the managing director of SCAADA Group iw

Third-party contractors will be held to a higher accountability under new Victorian EPA rules

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

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// AORA

Composting facilities complement biogas facilities for organics recycling By Charlie Emery THE circular economy is about designing out waste and pollution and keeping resources in use at their highest value, while regenerating natural systems. There’s a lot of organics to be diverted away from landfills in Australia. Sending organics to landfill releases greenhouse gases, primarily methane which contributes to climate change. The impact of methane on climate change is around 25 times greater than carbon dioxide. Nutrient-rich organic waste resources can be used to produce biogas for electricity as well as soil health products. Soil health and renewable energy are both central to a closed-loop carbon cycle and a circular economy. In the EU and USA, you’ll find biogas and composting facilities working side by side to create renewable energy and organic soil improvers. Co-locating these technologies significantly reduces environmental footprints. Then there is the anaerobic digestion (AD) process, which creates biogas and digestate. Combining biogas and composting technologies means the composting facility can take the digestate as a liquid or as a solid. Organic waste delivered to an AD plant can produce high-quality biofertiliser via wet or dry systems. The end by-product of the AD process is mixed with other organic materials and composted. Bringing together these different technologies means you can aggregate the inputs into one receiver and send it to the appropriate technology on the same site. There are multiple benefits to colocating an AD system with an aerobic In Vessel Composting (IVC) process: • It captures methane from organics first to produce biogas for electricity. • Outputs from the biogas plant can be used to create organic soil improvers. This avoids sending waste resources to multiple locations. • It reduces the number of transport

movements to and from facilities • It offers economies of scale for administration and site infrastructure. • Composting facilities have direct access to more renewable electricity for processing. A successful example of co-locating composting and AD is at Richgro’s facility in Jandakot, WA. The facility processes food waste to produce a high-quality biofertiliser and green energy to operate the site’s plant and equipment. Excess electricity from the plant is then fed back into the grid, powering homes in the City of Cockburn. EarthPower Technologies was one of the first food waste AD facilities in Australia. Located in the Sydney suburb of Camellia, the facility processes food wastes to produce green electricity and soil fertiliser. Food scraps from more than 14,000 households in the City of Sydney council are being sent to the facility. This saves the council on waste disposal costs, creates green energy, and produces an organic fertiliser for local agriculture businesses. Success for the Richgro and Earthpower facilities has come via commercial persistence and minimal regulatory support. Overseas, there are good incentives to supply renewable energy to the grid for community use. The following plans are in place in the UK to encourage AD plants: 1. The Green Gas Levy is placed on licensed gas suppliers who are required to make quarterly payments to fund the Green Gas Support Scheme. This scheme provides financial incentives for AD biomethane plants and aims to increase the proportion of green gas in the natural gas pipeline network. 2. The Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme provides financial assistance to promote heat from renewable sources, including biomass boilers. 3. Renewable Obligation Certificates are Green Certificates generated per megawatt hour (MWh) of energy generated from a renewable energy source, which can be then traded

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in the market to generate revenue. This scheme is similar to the Large-Scale Generation Certificates (LGCs) created in Australia under the Federal Government’s Renewable Energy Target. An LGC is created for every MWh of green energy generated. The recently released NSW Waste and Sustainable Materials Strategy includes AD, in-vessel composting and more advancement of the waste-toenergy conversation. Byron Shire Council’s proposed bioenergy facility will be the first of its kind in Australia. Dry AD uses oxygen-free (anaerobic) conditions to break down organic matter inside a contained facility. The resulting biogas

farmers and other stakeholders to sustainably manage our soil. The guiding principles of collaboration, science and innovation, knowledge sharing, and future soil security, inspired the National Soil Strategy. Its vision is to value soil as a key national asset that is better understood and sustainably managed to benefit the environment, economy, food, infrastructure, health, biodiversity and communities. Compost is key to soil health because it increases water retention, reduces compaction and erosion, improves drought tolerance and maintains biodiversity. Aerated composting infrastructure equipped with specialised air and water

AORA NSW ’s chair Charlie Emery is a champion of biogas being used to produce electricity.

is converted into 24/7 dispatchable and controllable renewable energy 365 days a year. The proposal will provide enough renewable energy to power the facility itself and the Byron Bay Sewage Treatment Plant with any excess available going back into the grid. The Australian Government recently announced $196.9 million in new funding over four years to implement the National Soil Strategy. This includes the Food Waste for Healthy Soils Fund, worth $67 million to enhance organic waste facilities and support community education to reduce food waste going to landfill. This funding will bring together governments, industry, researchers,

management systems can maximise outputs and minimise costs. This technology provides investment and jobs that lead to huge environmental benefits in water use, soil health and regeneration. Creating a closed-loop carbon cycle gives organic matter back to soil, increasing its ability to sequester carbon. Drawing down carbon from the atmosphere reduces greenhouse gas emissions and mitigates climate change. Introducing mechanisms to assist with establishing AD, supplying renewable energy to produce soil health products or power our homes should make sense. Charlie Emery is the chair of AORA NSW

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Biogas //

Nowra has been chosen as the new site for the biogas facility

Biogas plant to be built at Nowra site NOWRA is to become home to a large-scale waste to energy biogas plant. The upcoming project is a joint venture between Innovating Energy, Botres Global and biogas tank manufacturer Schumann Tanks. “Nowra will be the first of a number of renewable waste to energy projects to be developed by the Joint Venture throughout Australia and New Zealand, which will be fuelled by cow manure and other organic wastes,” said Innovating Energy’s managing director, David Ryan. “The project will improve the dairy farming environment by cleaning up waterways and contributing to reducing CO2 emissions for the dairy farms who are constantly striving for solutions to reduce farm pollution.” Several dairy farmers in the region have already signed on to the project. The biogas plant is to be built on the Terara Sewage Treatment Plant site owned by Shoalhaven Water & Shoalhaven Council and is unique in that the manure from each dairy farm in the group will be aggregated to feed and operate the plant and the electricity produced 42

will be shared between the group of dairies and Shoalhaven Council with the excess being sold to retail customers. The group of local dairy farmers are the project’s biggest supporters and have said that the Biogas Plant will provide cost benefits and energy savings for their dairies and will

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

assist in helping to deal with manure management on each farm. Rising energy costs are a consideration in operating dairy farms, particularly the costs associated with keeping milk chilled at the required temperature prior to pick up by processors, so generating electricity from their own farms will be a benefit.

The Innovating Energy Biogas plant will be built over a 12-14 month period with completion expected in early 2022. It will feature the very latest in Biogas technology provided by Botres Global and Schumann Tanks producing clean, green energy 24/7 with zero emissions. iw

Biogas plants are becoming an important piece of infrastructure in the Australian waste landscape.

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Waste Business //

Calculating how much fuel tax credits a company is entitled to can be time consuming.

Fuel tax credits: how much money can you get back? WHETHER your contracts are for the inner city, suburbia or regional Australia, keeping a fleet of garbage trucks on the go is a costly exercise. And being a vehicle that takes its toll on the road, these trucks pay their fair share of road tax via the excise on fuel. Yet, these vehicles spend plenty of time off-road – at landfills and MRFs – offloading the contents of their bins. This means that during the time, they are not aiding in the deterioration of roads so therefore are not subject to the fuel tax. However, figuring out how much tax you should be getting back in the form of a tax credit can be confusing – What constitutes offroad? Does the ATO have a formula? Are there programs that can help you figure it all out? The answers are: depends, not really and yes. Peter Perich is a director of PPM Tax Group, who specialise in getting 44

monies back for businesses that use truck fleets, and especially like those in the waste sector that spend a fair amount of time off road. How does a business go about getting fuel tax credits and how does the government charge for the tax in the first place? “Fuel tax credits are about recovering excise tax on fuel. When you go to the servo at the moment you are paying about 0.43 cents a litre in tax for fuel,” said Perich. “If you are a business using it in certain activities, you can either recover the full amount or a partial amount. It has been given a number of names in the past. If you use that fuel for a business purpose that is not travelling on a public road you can get all your excise back. This covers such industries as mining, farming and construction. “However, if you are a heavy vehicle about 4.5 tonne GVM – such as

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

garbage trucks – then you have to take out a road user charge that drops you back to 16.9 cents per litre. The road user charge is the government’s way of recovering costs for the additional wear and tear on public roads by heavy vehicles. Historically, what has happening in the past was people would say ‘I have a vehicle that is 4.5 tonne GVM I can claim road transport rate. If I have off-road machinery and equipment I can claim that rate. If I have a light vehicle, I can’t claim it’. “However, the argument from the ‘Linfox Case’ – which was ultimately successful in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal was that – ‘well, it’s not the whole of the fuel. You can apportion the fuel you have used between activities, including to operate auxiliary equipment on heavy vehicles.” There are three activities that a

truck can exercise its right to get fuel tax credits when not on a public road and therefore do not have to pay the road user charge. These are: • Places where they don’t travel on a public roads. • The extent to which they idle in those places – when they are burning fuel and not travelling on a public road. • The operation of auxiliary equipment, The last point is a big one for the waste industry, according to Perich. It is essentially any moving parts on a vehicle that are driven by the main engine, i.e. using the fuel to operate. It is allowable to apportion some of the fuel use towards operating that equipment. This includes anything that is driven by a PTO (Power Take Off unit), which converts the power

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// Waste Business

from the engine into a form that can be used by different types of machinery that is mounted on the vehicle. This would include the bin-lifting mechanism on a garbage truck. It does not matter if the vehicle is on or off a public road when using this equipment. And what type of monies can be returned to the business? Depends on the size of the business and what they have claimed, said Perich. “In the past decade I have done about 500 reviews for all sorts of companies around the country – the largest being in the millions in terms of refunds, but usually it can be anything from a couple of grand to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It depends on the business, how they are currently claiming, and what their vehicles are doing,” he said. Perich uses a system called FTC Manager, which helps calculate the tax credits. One of the key issues when deciding on tax credits is what is off-road and what isn’t. Supported by ATO Product and Class Rulings, the system uses mapping technology, among other things, to make sure claims about the amount of time spent off-road are correct. The mapping system is two layered.

There is the base layer, which is called the centreline geo-tunnel, which is in blue. This is put 30m from the centre line either side of every public road in Australia. Anything within that area is on-road, everything outside that area is off-road. That is the starting point. However, the ATO does acknowledge there is no universally available map sets that are always 100 per cent accurate, said Perich. “People are drawing new sites; new roads are being constructed and that sort of thing is happening,” he said. “So, we have a second map, or layer, we can override that base line of mapping by drawing specific geofences around certain locations. For example, the first map indicating on-road areas, might encroach over areas that are definitely off road. If you don’t have a geofence that isolates that part of the grid, it will be considered on road. The geofences override that first layer and we can go right up to the edge of the road and maximise the off-road entitlement there. Every metre travelled in that area, or every second idled in that area, will be recorded as off-road travel or idle. It does it automatically, allowing customers to support a higher level of FTC claim.” Currently, the system has about

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35,000 geofences loaded. Every geofence is individually approved by PPM’s team of FTC advisors and once they are approved, they go into FTC Manager’s universal database so all customers can use them. “If you can think about it conceptually – if I am driving along the highway and I’ve got a GPS unit that pings off the satellite every three or five minutes, you can connect the dots and figure out what it is doing by following the road,” he said. “But, if that vehicle goes off a public road, into private property, and drives around and you’re pinging every five minutes, you’ve got no way of figuring out what it has actually been doing. Our system only works with second-by-second data attained from high-definition telemetry so we do not need to rely on ‘algorithms; to estimate what happens between satellite pings.” And just to be sure, the manufacturers of the system got a product and class ruling from the ATO. “The product ruling says that the apportionment methods used by system are fair and reasonable for the purposes of the fuel tax law, and the class ruling says that we can use the raw data as support for making

a claim. The product ruling took 10 months of negotiations with the ATO and was approved earlier this year,” said Perich. Perich acknowledges that some fleets are bigger than others, and that there can be differing amounts saved. However, he has seen a lot of money saved by many companies. He has completed about 310 FTC Manager reviews and has seen an average increase of claim of about $63 per vehicle per month, with some industries such as mining and agriculture tending to have much higher returns. “Bear in mind the cost of using the system is up to $15 a month, so the net average saving is at least $48 per vehicle,” he said. “There is no one size fits all, especially in the waste industry where you have different vehicles. What I will say about the waste industry is that they tend to have high off-road usage because of the nature of what they are doing. Not a lot of people understand the full extent of what they are entitled to claim. The more supporting data they have to evidence their fuel use during different activities, the more they can potentially recover and get refunds.” iw

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Difficult year, but waste shines through IT has been an interesting year in the waste space, with a lot going on in terms of trying to make sure the industry navigates its way through an array of changes that are occurring. From COVID-19 though to singleuse plastic bags being banned, as well as the diversion of waste from landfill targets being met, most of these challenges have been met head-on by the industry. It is keen to embrace these changes because it sees the long-term goals as essential for Australia in terms of meeting its circular economy and sustainability ambitions. Then there is the issue of energy-from-waste and what it means for the landscape. And what about new infrastructure, and more importantly, who is going to pay for it?

While these issues are at the forefront of industry, 2021 has also been a year where a lot of organisations and individuals have stepped up to lead the way, take on difficult propositions, and say what has to be said in order for the industry to move forward and provide the products and services the country and states want and deserve. With that in mind the Waste Innovation & Recycling Awards have been developed to recognise those that are leading the way in of making sure targets are being met, creating innovative and new ways of dealing with waste, and dealing with the government bureaucracy and red tape in order to get these ideas off the ground.

What is heartening about going through the different nominations (all listed on Page 48 and 49 of this issue), is the number of people excited to be in the industry, and companies that are taking the message on board in terms of community expectation. In some cases, they are using their own initiative without the big stick of local, state or federal government legislation waving in the background. Overall, there is an impressive array of nominations, and it would not be prudent to single any out. The judges have a difficult task ahead when trying to choose a standout in each category. Unfortunately due to the COVID epidemic, the hope of holding the awards in conjunction with the Waste Expo Australia event is now not

possible as the Expo has been moved to an online platform event. The good news is that, all going well and COVID doesn’t rear its head in another form, the awards will be held as a live event on March 31, 2022 at the Showtime Events Centre in Melbourne. As usual, sponsors are a key component to any successful awards night, and the Waste Innovation & Recycling Awards are no exception. We would like to thank ResourceCo, Daimler and the MWRRG for their sponsorship of the award’s program. Here’s hoping that next year, all sectors of the industry will start to see the benefits of the groundwork laid out by many companies, government bodies and individuals in 2021 in moving the industry forward. iw

ResourceCo backs Australia’s Waste Innovation & Recycling Awards GLOBAL leader in the recovery and re-manufacturing of primary resources, ResourceCo, has been announced as the sponsor for the coveted Innovation Award at the Waste Innovation and Recycling Awards, which will be held in early 2022. The Innovation Award recognises the evolution, invention and improvement that must always occur in the waste management and resource recovery

ResourceCo CEO Brad Lemmon.

sector, in order for a strong circular economy to grow. ResourceCo CEO of Waste & Recycling, Brad Lemmon, said the company is proud to support an Award that is focussed on innovation to build a sustainable future and make a positive difference. “We’ve been at the forefront of established and emerging markets for recovered materials for 30 years and have a strong understanding that to build a sustainable future, you need to accelerate growth through innovations and investments,” Lemmon said. “Earlier this year, we pioneered a domestic-led solution to waste glass, using over 8.5 tonnes of repurposed glass as an alternative base to sand in the construction of South Australian roads. “After successfully trialling the technology with the South Australian Department for Infrastructure and Transport, we further backed this latest innovation, by investing in a new glass processing plant north of Adelaide. “This investment is capable of transforming the way we use recycled materials on our roads, as we could ultimately see 30,000 tonnes of waste

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

glass repurposed into construction materials each year. “At the end of the day, it’s about backing progressive solutions in sustainability and building environmentally conscious partnerships across industries.” ResourceCo is also leading the way in the rubber remanufacturing industry, with its award-winning tyre recycling business, Tyrecycle, investing more than $10 million in the development of a new dedicated tyre processing plant in Sydney’s Erskine Park and a further $30 million in facilities all around Australia. Tyrecycle CEO Jim Fairweather said the facility will be outfitted with cutting-edge technology and world class equipment that will expand the business’ production capacity and capability for tyre-derived-fuel (TDF) and rubber crumb products. “It is only through investments in innovative new technologies, and a steadfast commitment to environmental security and improving current supply chains, that we can achieve meaningful and sustained progress towards a circular economy. “We’re delighted to back this Award, which demonstrates a real confidence

Tyrecycle CEO Jim Fairweather.

in the innovation of the resource recovery sector and its commitment to driving sustainable solutions to longstanding waste management issues.” The winner will be announced at the ceremony, with the Award going to a company or individual who has endeavoured to close the loop and achieve circularity by introducing new technologies, processes, or facilities to their operations. ResourceCo is also hoping that the Award will encourage others to continue finding new ways of progressing waste management and resource recovery across Australian markets. iw

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Once-in-a-generation step change THE Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group (MWRRG), more commonly known as Metro, based in Victoria is one of the sponsors of the Waste Innovation and Recycling Awards. The government entity will be sponsoring the Women in Waste Award, one that CEO Jill Riseley, believes is important not just for the industry but Australia as a whole. “Celebrating women in our sector is critical. We need the benefits and insights achieved through diversity to address the challenges of reducing waste and increasing resource recovery as we all are move towards a circular economy,” she said. “Women are going to be critical not only in terms of being part of that change that we are seeing in the industry, but also their ideas and innovations. I think at a really basic level, one thing I am keen to highlight, is that across the board, not just in our industry, we know there is more work to be done in improving gender diversity in Australia. We know that diversity

improves outcomes and is good for the bottom line. We continue to see the improvements in gender diversity, and continue to see representation in our industry. Recognising and encouraging the contribution of women is a critical part of that. This award recognises this, and we are pleased to be able to support it.” As an entity, Metro helps to support and transform change by interacting with the many councils within its purview. Delivering the Recycling Victoria policy at Metro is key as it continues to work with councils. More broadly, at a national level, the implementation of the national waste policy and the ban on the export of plastics in June this year, and tyres at the end of the year, are also focusses. “For Metro, we’re playing a role in supporting industry and councils to adopt a adjust to these changes,” said Riseley. “The ongoing development of end markets is something that we think requires continued attention and

MWRRG CEO Jill Riseley.

investment. That is critical in creating that lasting and circular reform. “These things, when you put them together, are a once-in-a-generation step change in how we approach recycling and waste. It is a really exciting time and keeping us all out of trouble. We are very busy.” As Riseley points out, dealing with 79 councils sometimes means there are 79 views on policies. However, one great thing about working in such an environment is that everybody wants similar outcomes. “I’ve found all the council’s

incredibility receptive and accommodating to what we are trying to achieve,” she said. “They all have different appetites for change, and they all have different capacities to introduce a change in form depending on their municipalities. Some municipalities have got challenges that others don’t. Whether that be in regional, rural or metropolitan setting. Some of our Metro councils see community and behaviour change as really critical things that need to be invested into in order to deliver reform. Other councils are at different points in their journey. To answer the question broadly, councils have been really enthusiastic and supportive partners. “We are a state government entity and report to a board. I am in awe of CEOs of councils. They do an amazing job. Councils do an amazing job. You look at the touch points, particularly waste – every household having recycling or FOGO, or organics or waste collected every week, every fortnight. There are very few industries that go house to house on such a regular basis. It is really impressive that the service that councils deliver, and deliver it really efficiently and really well.” iw

Leadership starts at the top the refuse collection driver and crew.

Leadership in the area of safety.

MERCEDES-BENZ Trucks is proud to be recognising individuals in the waste industry who have shown strength in leadership over the past year. Leadership within an industry is an important value to be recognised. Leaders push boundaries, challenge the norm, and make changes to drive progress. Such leadership leads to products like The Econic truck from Mercedes-Benz Trucks being developed, which is a leader in the field of refuse collection. The Econic is powerful and efficient, while also delivering great safety for all road users. It delivers sustainable solutions to the growing emissions burden in urban areas, and provides an ideal working condition for

Providing trucks that are safe for not only the driver and the goods they are transporting, but the wider community at large, is an ongoing endeavour for Mercedes-Benz Trucks. The low-entry concept means that there are only two steps up into the cab, making getting in and out easy and safer. On a busy working day, that means less climbing up and down in the Econic compared with other trucks. Also good for the back and the joints is the full air suspension with raising and lowering function on all axles. The walk-through cab allows the driver to enter and exit the cab from the traffic-free side of the road using the inward-opening folding door. That’s not just practical, it prevents accidents. Optimum vision of the road, and reducing blind sports, is an important strategy to ensure all road users are kept safe. The Econic allows drivers to see other

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road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists, at eye level. The low seating position of the driver, the glazed cab and the additional safety assistance systems make for a great view of the road and pavements in all directions – and compared with regular trucks, that’s an advantage in busy inner cities and complex situations. This provides drivers with optimal support and ensures greater safety on the road. The Econic can be equipped with as many as 10 safety assistance systems with the aid of cameras, sensors and additional lighting systems, designed for urban operations. These assistance systems range from Sideguard Assist, pre-installation for Reversing Assist, Active Brake Assist, Adaptive Cruise Control, and the blind spot camera.

Providing solutions to meet the growing emissions burden in urban areas. The efficient Euro VI OM936 7.7l engine platform, with outputs ranging from 200kW (272hp) at 2,200rpm, to

260kW (354hp) at 2,200rpm, minimise the particulate emissions and nitrous oxides produced from traditional Euro V engines, as well as fuel and AdBlue consumption.

Ideal working conditions The Econic’s spacious cab offers great freedom of movement, and its wellengineered design delivers the ideal working conditions. Depending on the field of operation, there is room for up to three passengers. When pulling away, the folding door on the passenger side closes automatically. Depending on the field of operation, a hinged door can also be installed. Furthermore, you can choose between a high and a low cab height. With the Econic, Mercedes-Benz Trucks leads the waste industry in the field of providing safer, more efficient and comfortable trucks. Mercedes-Benz Trucks is proud to recognise individuals who demonstrate the same leadership values in order to drive progress for our Australian waste and recycling industry. iw

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Waste Innovation & Recycling Awards 2021 Outstanding Facility Award ReProcess Tas - Spectran Group ReProcess Tas is a 12-acre state-ofthe-art construction and demolition waste reprocessing facility in Southern Tasmania. The facility is the first of its kind in the state. Commercial Pilot Facility - Bardee Bardee transforms food waste into

Leader of the Year Award sponsored by Daimler

Women of Waste Award – Sponsored by Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group Sabina Wills Sabina has driven change and

WARR Workplace of the Year Award Handybin Waste Services Handybin is committed to the philosophy of seeking maximum recovery of recyclables and of achieving the highest economic value for all its products. It has successfully introduced glass, polystyrene and textiles recycling to the communities it services.

Community Engagement Success of the Year Award WasteSorted Talking My Language City of Wanneroo This program is a multilingual learning resource developed to overcome barriers experienced by culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) demographics when accessing waste education messaging.

protein and fertiliser with insects. Every tonne of protein offsets 50 tonnes of CO2e carbon emissions and uses no additional water. Central Waste Facility – Bega Valley Shire Council The construction of an emergency landfill cell and resource recovery area were a direct response to the

Harry Wilson Harry Wilson is an industry icon, with a career spanning 50 years in the waste and resource recovery sector. His working career has included both small, private companies, and large Australian blue-chip corporates and leading and developing his own business. Over the years, he has lead innovation, conducted research and shared results leading to best practice.

innovation, including developing cleaner production solutions in the wine industry, the first Buy Recycled Conference and statistical analysis of landfill audits.

2019-2020 Black Summer Bushfires that hit the area. Taking a basic concept and turning it into a landfill cell and associated infrastructure happened over a 14week period and demonstrated the commitment from Bega Valley Shire Council to help get its community back on its feet.

Julian Grasso Julian is co-founder and owner of both 30XY Group and Reclaim Waste. He founded 30XY Group approximately 10 years ago and established Reclaim Waste in 2021. Julian sits on a number of committees within the waste industry and has a real passion to do better for the industry.

Susie McBurney Susie has more than 20 years’ experience in the waste industry, spanning a number of senior management positions at both Remondis and Cleanaway. She has managed complex situations in many areas of the industry.

Larissa Rose Larissa has mentored more than 32 students over the past 4.5 years. She has curated an ‘Internship and Mentoring Program through her company, Glowing Green Australia. She has played a pivotal role in building the leaders of the future, which is her methodology and duty of care she believes is necessary for true leadership.

that exists to turn ground coffee waste into a resource in the community. Larissa Rose Larissa has demonstrated leadership in mentoring young women to achieve personal and professional success. Key to this success has been her Internship and Mentoring Program.

Ninna Larsen Ninna started Reground, a model

Remondis Australia Remondis Australia has operated Mugga Lane Landfill, Mugga Lane Transfer Station, Mitchell Transfer Station and ACT’s Recycling Drop-Off Centres. It has also operated the Mugga 2 Quarry site since 2019. Over time, the facilities have transitioned from disposal to resource recovery operations.

Bega Valley Shire Council The council’s construction of an emergency landfill cell and resource recovery area were a direct response to the 2019-2020 Black Summer Bushfires. Taking a concept and turning it into a landfill cell and infrastructure demonstrated the commitment from Council to help get its community back on its feet.

TerraCycle School Recycling Program - TerraCycle TerraCycle is empowering teachers and parents to raise the next generation with sustainable practices and values, by incorporating hands-on learning about recycling through activities in the classroom.

Our Future Waste community engagement - Sunshine Coast Council Sunshine Coast Council sought assistance from Engagement Plus to assist it to better understand community views on options to extend the collection and processing of organic waste.

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Perth Material Recovery Facility – Cleanaway Cleanaway reopened the Perth MRF located in South Guildford after a fire. The $26 million facility has the capacity to process over half of commingled recycling from residents and customers across Western Australia delivering up to 90 per cent recovery of reusable products.

Glowing Green Australia Larissa Rose has mentored more than 32 students over the last 4.5 years. She has curated an Internship and Mentoring Program and has played a pivotal role in building the leaders of the future, which is her methodology of teaching future trailblazers the necessary steps to become a leader of an organisation.

Waste Wednesday - Forbes Shire Council The Forbes Shire Council engaged with the community and spread awareness about the ongoing resource recovery facilities available, statistics related to the waste surveys/audits carried out by the Council, innovations and additions to the existing resource recovery programs and more.

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

Young Professional of the Year Award Stacey Ward Stacey Ward is an integral member of the Waste Futures team at the City of Port Phillip. She led several projects critical to the success of the ‘Don’t Waste It!’ Waste Management Strategy, including the Council’s first ever food and garden organics trial, which is now an ongoing service.

Innovation Award sponsored by ResourceCo Handybin multi-stream recycling services - Handybin Waste Services Handybin seeks the maximum recovery of recyclables and achieving the highest economic value for all its

Operational Excellence Award Remondis Operational Excellence in the ACT Remondis Australia has operated Mugga Lane Landfill, Mugga Lane Transfer Station, Mitchell Transfer Station and ACT’s Recycling Drop Off Centres since it acquired Thiess Services in 2011. Remondis has also operated the Mugga 2 Quarry site since 2019. Over time, the facilities have transitioned from disposal to resource recovery operations with the Remondis ACT team using

Outstanding WARR Project Award – Regional Kleinton Waste Management Facility - Toowoomba Regional Council The Kleinton Waste Management Facility and is based on a the nearby GTWMF facility, including a Reviva Tip Shop. The Kleinton Tip Shop has demonstrated diversion of around 15 tonnes per month since opening. In addition, mattress processing has been implemented at both sites. Since commencing in November 2020, it has

Outstanding WARR Project Award – Metro Paving the Way - SSROC Paving the Way has created a local closed-loop market for approximately one-third of participating councils’ domestic glass collections. It has reduced greenhouse gases, and driven essential infrastructure development and job creation.

Samuel Lawson When Samuel was young, he followed his Grandma around as she pointed to plants and told him of their everyday uses. Her influence led him to study analytical and environmental chemistry, which connected him to Keep Victoria Beautiful (KVB). Samuel is a research and project coordinator at KVB, specialising in litter/illegal dumping from a land manager perspective.

Matthew Day Matthew is a technical engineer with Remondis Australia. Having completed his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and Archaeology, Matthew joined Remondis as a part of its 2019 Graduate Program. His responsibilities include assisting business development, providing technical advice and support, and the management of projects from initiation to full operation.

products. Since building the plant in 2012, and further upgrading in 2015, and in addition to the traditional MRF operations, the company has successfully introduced glass, polystyrene and textile recycling to the communities it services.

The Reground Coffee Recycling Service: A Model for Circular Practices was established in 2016 as Australia’s first coffee collection system, and has since seen the diversion of over 700,000kgs of ground coffee from landfill.

The Reground Coffee Recycling Service - Reground Reground is a certified social enterprise turning waste into a resource to create a circular economy.

Recycled Plastics RMP Noisewalls Pact Group In a world first innovation, Pact has transformed 600 tonnes of hard to recycle plastic waste into a recycled noisewall panels spanning 32,000

their operational expertise to assist the region to achieve their ambitious objectives under the ACT Waste Management Strategy 2011-2025.

Training Course has been reviewed and endorsed by EPA Victoria and is being rolled out to officers all around the state.

Waste enforcement training - Keep Victoria Beautiful The Litter Enforcement Officer Network run by Keep Victoria Beautiful has designed and delivered the only training for authorised officers on the new Environment Protection Act. The Regulating Litter and Other Waste

ReProcess Tas - Spectran Group ReProcess Tas is a 12-acre state-ofthe-art construction and demolition waste reprocessing facility in Southern Tasmania. The facility is the first of its kind in the state and at full operation, allows up to 95 per cent reduction in construction waste entering landfill.

processed over 5100 mattresses, which has saved 1900m3 of landfill space and produced over 60 tonnes of steel.

online, to regional councils in person and online, and has released a seminar recording to ensure all councils have access to the training.

Waste enforcement training – Keep Victoria Beautiful To date this training course has been delivered in various formats and at a range of costs. Over 60 officers have been trained and increases in their understanding of the new Act have been seen. It has delivered the course to metropolitan councils in person and

McMullin Building Demolition Drumderg Services The demolition of the McMullin Building proved to be a benchmark project for the University of Newcastle, Drumderg and TSA Management in establishing complementary protocols for planning, achieving and exceeding

Creating Change with Containers in WA – Remondis Remondis Australia currently operates the collection and processing of non-glass products for WA’s Container Deposit Scheme (CDS) for the Perth, Peel and Wheatbelt regions. Containers are sorted at drop-off points by material type and is then collected and processed.

Berwick Reconophalt project – Stockland Minta Reconophalt is a road surfacing material that contains recycled content derived from waste streams (soft plastics, toner, glass and reclaimed road) that would otherwise be bound for landfill. It is a type of asphalt that does not cause any harm to the environment or exude harmful fumes.

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

Tara Osborne Tara has been at BINGO for over four years and has seen the company through its IPO and large acquisitions. At the age of 28, Tara took on the challenge of being a general manager at BINGO. The company has provided many opportunities and challenges for Tara, which she has risen to every time she has been asked.

square metres of the Mordialloc Freeway. Each panel comprises 75 per cent recycled materials. Polyrok - Replas Polyrok concrete is the latest innovation from Replas. It is a sustainable recycled plastic aggregate alternative to mineral aggregate in concrete for pathways, kerbs and channels that finds a home for one of the most problematic waste streams, soft plastic.

Optimising waste collection initiative - Brimbank City Council Brimbank’s Asset Services Team introduced digital mapping for waste collection to replace its outdated paper-based system. The all-in-one digital solution wasn’t just about replacing paper-based mapping and procedures with GPS-like mapping, event log and digital forms. It was about using technology to improve driver safety among a range of other features.

best practice environmental, recycling, HAZMAT removal and safety across all phases of the demolition project. FOGO deep dive education project – Forbes Shire Council The objective of the project is to recover FOGO materials ending up in the landfill. A three-month long education and awareness campaign focusing on diversion of FOGO materials from red lid garbage bins to green lid FOGO bins was delivered.

Recycled Organics and medical equipment trial - Epworth HealthCare Centre Epworth HealthCare has recycled almost 30-tonnes of food waste, medical PVC and employee uniforms, turning these items into electricity, garden hose and stuffing for exercise equipment. iw

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Capabilities Statements //

CAPS Australia Company Overview:

the complete end-to-end solution.

CAPS Australia is a privately owned and proud Australian company intent on remaining at the forefront of compressed air, critical power generation solutions. CAPS offers capital sales, rental equipment, engineering & manufacturing, service and parts. CAPS has over 40 years of experience in the Australian market with nine branches across Australia and over 170 employees, including 60 service technicians covering the full national footprint with a 24/7 service offering. CAPS is an independent company with the flexibility to search globally for the best products and technologies that best serve the Australian market’s needs and unique conditions. CAPS has world-renowned partner brands such as Ingersoll-Rand, KOHLER/ SDMO, AIRMAN, Sauer, Pedro Gil and many more. CAPS has in-house engineering capabilities, able to customer engineer any equipment to your needs and specifications. Back this with our Australian ISO 9001 accredited manufacturing facilities, CAPS can provide

Products & Services: • • • • • • • •

Power Generators Air Compressors Dryers Blowers Spare Parts 24/7 Servicing Engineering services Rental / Hire

Products & Services: • • • • • • •

KOHLER/SDMO AIRMAN INGERSOLL-RAND TEKSAN SAUER BEKO DEEPSEA

Core Capabilities: CAPS Diesel Generators; together with KOHLER are tailored designed to meet onsite limited real estate; featuring superior transient performance; maximum reliability; low specific fuel consumption

& market leader with high power density for various segments. Our portfolio covers high speed diesel generators up to 4600kVA (50 Hz); available with different voltage configurations; packaged either in a purpose-built acoustic enclosure or plant room install. Standby Diesel Generators guarantee energy security for waste to energy facilities; to prevent critical process sudden shutdowns; which are termed detrimental to both equipment & revenue generation. The CAPS Diesel Generators are engineered; tailored built to deliver superior performance but also meet stringent requirements related to real estate; load acceptance & noise

performance; together with in-house engineering & local partners.

• Ecostar Dynamic Screens (Italy) • Ecohog Air Separation Technologies (Northern Ireland) • Hammel Recyclingtechnik (Germany) • Jono Enviro (China) • Lindner Recyclingtech (Austria) • Vezzani (Italy)

Utilise our global relationships and local knowledge to deliver positive business outcomes for our clients and continually improving environmental solutions for Australia and New Zealand. Specialists in: • hard to process waste • mobile and static processing solutions • manufacture of custom components • high quality and on budget projects

Contact Details: CAPS Australia 185 Planet Street Welshpool WA 6106 Phone: 1800 800 878 Email: info@caps.com.au Website: www.caps.com.au Key Contacts: Nestor DeNiese National Sales Manager – Power Generation Number: +61 8 6250 9871 Email: nestor.deniese@caps.com.au

CSS Recycling Equipment Solutions Company Overview: With 20 years of experience in our unique Australian and New Zealand region, CSS Recycling Equipment customises waste, organics, and scrap metal processing solutions, by taking a collaborative and consultative approach with their clients. From the provision of ad hoc machinery and technology to fit an existing processing line, up to complete plant and materials handling solutions, CSS Recycling Equipment designs each solution specific to client’s requirements. CSS Recycling Equipment takes a comprehensive approach, starting with on site reviews of existing processes, machinery and capability, analysis of client objectives, challenges, and end materials. By working closely with clients and with exclusive global suppliers to curate the best possible solutions, CSS becomes a trusted strategic partner, integrating technology, improving processes and bottom line results. The technologies represented by 50

CSS Recycling Equipment Solutions are sourced from around the world, are proven and reliable and have been tried and tested in our region. CSS Recycling Equipment specialises in processing all types of materials from C&D to C&I, from MSW to FOGO, Biomass and Wood, Compost and to hard to process waste. Products and Services: Specialising in all aspects of reduction, separation and recycling technology: • Complete consultative and collaborative plant design and delivery • Fuel Preparation Technology • Shredding • Screening • Air Separation • Baling and Shear Baling • Plastics Washing and Preparation • FOGO • Waste to Energy technology Brands: • 3Tek Scrap Metal technologies (USA) • Beier Machinery (China)

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Core Capabilities: Collaborate, consult, design, deliver and the supply of high quality equipment and plant solutions for C&D, C&I, Biomass, Organics, Wood Waste, FOGO, MSW, Scrap Metal industries. Source innovative and strategic solutions both within and outside of our stable of equipment solutions, always with the client’s outcome as our focus.

Contact Details: CSS Recycling Solutions PO Box 359, Dee Why NSW 2099 Phone: 1800 644 978 Email: info@cssequipment.com.au Web: www.cssequipment.com.au

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

// Capabilities Statements

Davis Earthmoving & Quarrying Pty Ltd Davis Earthmoving & Quarrying is a leader in mobile waste processing in NSW. For over 45 years, Davis has successfully completed tens of thousands of diverse projects for councils, government, civil and commercial sectors. Established in 1975, Davis Earthmoving is an Australian, family-owned company offering Green Waste Recycling, Concrete Recycling, Glass Recycling, C&D Shredding, Crushing, Screening, Mulching, Land Clearing, Haulage and Supply of Recycled Products. We process over a quarter of a million tonnes of material per annum. Davis has 100 pieces of diverse Plant & Equipment in its privately owned fleet for hire or contract, all equipment is available in-house. We operate our own service centre for scheduled maintenance and service trucks for field repairs. This guarantees safety, quality assurance and maximum efficiency. Our warehouse of spare parts minimises delay waiting for suppliers or imported parts – meaning little delay for clients. A key goal is client satisfaction. We’re here to help our customers by offering economical and efficient waste

management solutions. We’re a trusted Contractor known for our reliability – we always deliver. We’re on time, every time. CEO Eric Davis has in-depth experience in recycling and mobile waste processing. Davis Earthmoving has demonstrated stability, whilst also being progressive in an ever-evolving industry. Products and Services: • Green Waste Recycling • Forest Mulching, Timber & Stump Grinding • Land Clearing, Road Widening & Forestry • Crushing & Concrete Recycling • Screening • Low Speed, High Speed, C&D Shredding • Glass Recycling • Quality Recycled Landscaping Supplies • Plant & Equipment Hire • Bulk & Heavy Haulage For hire: • Low Speed Shredders; Komptech • Horizontal Grinders; Diamond Z, Peterson

• • • • • •

Picking Stations; Kiverco Mobile Crushers; Rubblemaster, Metso Soil & Trommel Screens; Pronar, Metso Forestry Mulchers; FAE Feller Bunchers; Tigercat Excavators 1.8 to 46 tonne; CAT, Komatsu • Dozers, Rollers, Compactors & Drotts • Wheel & Track Loaders Core Capabilities: Davis Earthmoving offers reliable, high-powered, mobile waste processing equipment for hire or contract in NSW. We deliver high-volume production to meet client’s varied needs and specifications. Our Low Speed Shredder processes heavy C&D, logs, palms, carpet, tires, mattresses. We have equipment

available for forestry mulching, tree felling, subdivisions, road constructions, grubbing, firebreaks. Horizontal Grinders process green waste, C&D, timber, stumps, logs. Mobile and Trommel Screens process soil, timber, green waste. Our Crushers recycle concrete, brick, rock and glass. Our aim is to efficiently recover environmentally sustainable and quality recycled products for beneficial reuse in a circular economy. Contact Details: Davis Earthmoving & Quarrying Pty Ltd PO BOX 19 TERREY HILLS NSW 2084 Phone: (02) 9450 2288 Email: davisem@davisem.com.au Web: davisem.com.au

Komptech CEA Company Overview: Komptech CEA is the Australasian distributor of Komptech machinery and systems for the treatment and processing of solid waste and organics waste materials for recovery and recycling. Our product range includes over 30 different types of both mobile and stationary machines that cover all key processes in modern waste processing including: • Single-shaft and dual-shaft industrial shredders • Compost windrow turners for commercial operations • Star screen and trommel screen machines • Material separation equipment including windsifters, ballistic separators and stone contaminant separators • Stationary recycling system solutions including shredders, separators and screening machines Brands: • Diamond Z • Screenpod • Trackstack

• Rowan • Komptech Core Capabilities: With a specialized product portfolio that includes over thirty different types of machines covering all key processes in modern waste handling, a consultative guiding approach to solution development for customers, and full service aftersales support and parts, Komptech CEA has become a leading supplier to the recycling and waste processing industry. Providing customer value is our focus as we strive to be the industry’s technological leader through continual innovation. Komptech CEA is dedicated to working with you to help you solve your waste problems and identify opportunities with comprehensive, detailed solutions driven by world-class technology. Contact Details: Sydney 6 Skyline Crescent Horningsea Park, NSW 2171 1300 352 378 www.komptechcea.com.au

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

Melbourne 109 Merola Way Campbellfield, VIC 3061 1300 352 378 www.komptechcea.com.au Brisbane 103 Axis Place Larapinta, QLD 4110 1300 352 378 www.komptechcea.com.au Adelaide 260 Cormack Rd Wingfield, SA 5013 1300 352 378 www.komptechcea.com.au Perth 230-232 Welshpool Rd Welshpool, WA 6106

1300 352 378 www.komptechcea.com.au Auckland 96 Gavin Street Mt Wellington 1060 0800 435 269 www.komptechcea.com.au Key Contacts: Craig Cosgrove Product Manager 0417 320 082 c.cosgrove@cea.net.au Simon Humphris Product Manager 0478 196 263 s.humphris@cea.net.au

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Capabilities Statements //

Hitachi Zosen Inova Company Overview: Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI) is a global leader in energy from waste (EfW), anaerobic digestion (AD) and Powerto-Gas, acting as an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor delivering complete turnkey plants and system solutions for energy recovery from waste. Since 2015, HZI Australia, a 100% subsidiary of HZI, is developing new projects in Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific. Its first project, the 300,000 tpy East Rockingham WtE is now in construction and will start commercial operation in Dec 2022.

carbon-neutral economy • Development, Design, Build, Finance, Own, Operation & Maintenance Brands: • Hitachi Zosen • Aquaroll, DYNOR, Kompogas, • HZI Etogas, HZI DryMining Core Capabilities: Energy from Waste, Renewable Gas, Project Development, EPC, O&M, Asset Management Recent Projects/Installations:

Products/Services: • Thermal treatment of residual waste, energy recovery, flue gas treatment, and residue recycling • Dry anaerobic digestion of food & green resources, renewable power production, biogas upgrading to biomethane and bio-CNG • Power-to-Gas for volatile electricity into renewable synthetic gas for a

DUBAI ENERGY FROM WASTE (EFW) – START OF OPERATIONS IN 2024 Warsan, Dubai, United Arab Emirates The world’s largest EfW processing up to 1,89 mill tpy of non-recyclable municipal solid waste from the Dubai area and producing 171MW of electricity. To be designed, built and commissioned by a JV partnership between HZI and BESIX Group with a

minimum of 30 years’ operation and inclusive of minority ownership. Visit https://www.hz-inova.com/projects/ dubai-uae/

site. Visit https://www.hz-inova.com/ kompogas-for-the-future/

Contact Details: ZUFFENHAUSEN ANAEROBIC DIGESTION PLANT – START OF OPERATIONS IN 2023 Baden-Württemberg, Germany A dry anaerobic digestion plant using HZI’s Kompogas® technology to process 35,000 tpy of source-separated organic waste from the Stuttgart urban area into biogas, high-grade liquid fertilizer and compost. The bulk of the biogas will be used at the manufacturing plant of a well-known automaker to produce electricity and heat for direct use on

Hitachi Zosen Inova Australia Pty Ltd Level 17, 40 Mount Street North Sydney, NSW 2060 Phone: 02-8003 4110 Email: info@hz-inova.com Web site: www.inova.com Key Contacts: Dr Marc Stammbach 02 – 8003 4110 info@hz-inova.com

Komatsu Forest Company Overview: Komatsu Forest is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of forest machines. We are represented on six world continents by a network of dealers and our own sales companies. Komatsu Forest’s head office is in Umeå, Sweden, and we have two manufacturing units, in Sweden and the USA. Our own sales companies are located in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Austria, France, United Kingdom, Russia, USA, Australia and Brazil, and our network of dealers represent us on all other important forestry markets. Our extensive service organisation takes care of the machines, ensuring that they perform their best throughout their service lives. We have workshops throughout the world, service vehicles for quick assistance, in-house machine and methodology instructors to help maximise productivity, and support functions for everything related to our machines and services. Products and Services: We offer products and services that 52

increase productivity while simplifying the working day for you as a machine owner. We combine all our services under our Customer Care concept. This is our promise that you will enjoy the benefits of Komatsu Forest’s investments in research, development, servicing, support, logistics and innovative services. These combined resources are at the very heart of Komatsu Forest’s offer. Our goal is to make your working day as safe, problem-free and profitable as possible, no matter where in the world you operate. Let us show you that by choosing Komatsu, peace of mind and accessibility can become a natural part of your working day. Brands • Komatsu • Peterson • TimberPro Core Capabilities: Our world-wide network of highly trained service professionals is ready for you. We know how important it is to be

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

close to service and maintenance when help is needed. Therefore, we have a market-wide network of highly trained service professionals that knows your Komatsu, Peterson & Timberpro machine in every detail. They are, in turn, in constant contact with the Komatsu Forest head office so your voice or needs are never more than a call away from our collective expertise. Furthermore, we are constantly developing new services that will help you in your everyday work. We offer: • Workshops and field services throughout Australia & New Zealand • Well qualified personnel with expert knowledge of Komatsu & affiliated machines • Field Service that enables us to remain close to you and your

machine • Support and maintenance throughout your machine’s service life • Maintenance agreements with fixed maintenance prices and other benefits Contact Details: AUSTRALIA Komatsu Forest Pty Ltd 4/11 Ave of Americas Newington, NSW 2127 T : +61 2 9647 3600 E : info.au@komatsuforest.com NEW ZEALAND Komatsu Forest Pty Ltd 15C Hyland Cres Rotorua, New Zealand M: John Kosar + 64 274 865 844 M: Paul Roche + 64 21 350 747

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

// Capabilities Statements

Merlo Group Company Overview: Merlo is an Italian-based industrial group that designs, manufactures and markets its products under the Merlo and Treemme brands, both synonymous with quality the world over, with a commitment to respecting the environment. All the products in the Merlo range have the largest cabin and operator space available to the Australian market, which is characterised by innovation, technology and reliability. They are distinctive characteristics of the Merlo Group that have earned the trust of the world telehandler markets. Since its origins, the Merlo Group has always had an international approach in terms of product and business; this global vision of the market today generates the export of more than 90% of production. Today the Merlo Group’s worldwide presence is guaranteed by a direct organisation of six branches (France, Germany, England, Spain, Poland and Australia), by a distribution network of over 50 importers and 800 dealers, offering widespread coverage in terms

AUSTRALIA

of sales, service and spare parts. The Merlo Group’s international approach continues to increase its global presence, guaranteeing proximity to customers and opening up new markets by introducing hightech products with superior safety standards. The Merlo Group’s products are created from the deep experience gained in over 50 years of history; they satisfy every market and customer need. Products & Services: The Merlo brand has always been synonymous with cuttingedge technology in the field of telehandlers, operating machines and telescopic boom tractors. Core Capabilities: Merlo’s advanced technology has become the driving force behind a development that has made it possible to look beyond daily business. Safety, comfort, performance are the key words. As a result, every machine

rises the bar and sets a new standard in terms of design, power, care for man and the environment. This winning attitude translates into high integration into production processes, modern construction systems, process automation, revolutionary integrated electronic systems, in robotised processes and much more. Our commitment to maintaining an ever-closer relationship with our customers is reflected in our ongoing training and updating of programmes, our technical support services, and the trusted relationship with our extended dealer network. The results of all this

are compact machines, with ease of operation, that ensures the unrivalled operating features of, comfort, efficiency and above all, unparalleled safety. This is the strength of the Merlo product. Merlo Group Australia - TRUSTED

• STEINERT MTE electric drum • STEINERT EddyC eddy current separator • STEINERT ISS induction sensor sorting system • STEINERT KSS combination sensor sorting system • UniSort PR EVO 5.0 NIR sensor sorting system

enables us to hold critical spare parts for our equipment and perform full repairs and refurbishments in local response times. Together with our team of service technicians we are able to provide a high standard of after-care for our equipment.

Contact Details: Merlo Group Australia Pty Ltd 120-124 Toongabbie Rd, Girraween NSW 2145 Phone: 1300 657 325 Email: sales@merloaustralia.com.au Web: https://www.merlo.com

STEINERT Company Overview: STEINERT is a manufacturer of superior magnetic separation and state-ofthe-art sensor sorting equipment. Headquartered in Cologne, Germany with subsidiaries in Australia, USA, Brazil, STEINERT supplies the waste, metal recycling and mining industry globally. With over 130 years of history STEINERT is at the forefront of technology and innovation with a focus on quality, reliability and continuous research. STEINERT’s presence in Australia encompasses a manufacturing facility in Melbourne, Victoria where the Australian designed and made magnets originate. STEINERT’s Test Facility in Perth, Western Australia provides customers with the opportunity to test small and large samples under conditions that very closely match real life scenarios. Customers beneﬁt from the very latest ﬁndings and technological advancements in a tried and tested environment, utilising the latest STEINERT sensor-based combination sorting solutions. STEINERT’s Service Technicians are based on both the east coast and

west coast of Australia and have the capability to support your service requirements around the country, both on-site and remotely. This strong presence ensures best support of the magnetic and sensor sorting equipment for the customers in Australia. Products & Services: • Overhead suspension magnets, electric and permanent • Magnetic drums, electric and permanent • Eddy current separators • Near Infrared sorters • Optical sorters • Induction sensor sorters • X-ray transmission/fluorescence sensor sorters • Combination sensor sorters • Service & maintenance Brands: • STEINERT MAGV/MAGX suspension electromagnet • STEINERT MAGP permanent suspension magnet

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

Core Capabilities: We support customers from the project design stage with application knowledge, material testing in our test facilities, process consultation, supply of equipment, on-site commissioning to continuous service support, maintenance and repairs from our Australian team. Our manufacturing facility in Melbourne

Contact Details: STEINERT Australia Pty Ltd 14 Longstaff Road, Bayswater VIC 3153 P: +61 3 8720 0800 E: sales@steinert.com.au W: www.steinert.com.au Key Contacts: Johann Hefner Resource Recovery P: +61 499500801

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Capabilities Statements //

Applied Machinery

Australasian Specialty Coatings that allows for bespoke designs for your particular needs.

Brands: • • • •

Contact Details: 55-61 Nissan Drive Dandenong VIC 3175 Phone: 03 9706 8066 Email: sales@appliedmachinery.com.au Web: www.appliedmachinery.com.au Company Overview: Applied Machinery is one of Australia’s largest suppliers of quality recycling machinery. Over 30 years industry experience enables us to deliver turnkey solutions for all manner of recycling applications across Australia. Products and Services: • Shredders and granulators • Plastic washing, tyre, and e-waste recycling plants • Repelletising systems/screen changers • Polystyrene recycling machines

Genox Polystar Fimic Greenmax

Core Capabilities: Applied Machinery has the capability to service the smallest single machine requirement, through to the largest of multi-site, staged installations and complete recycling line, turn-key projects. We supply some of Australia’s largest recycling organisations. A wide range of shredders and granulators are always in stock for quick delivery. Recent Projects/Installations: PORT PLASTICS Port Macquarie Polystar Repelletising system and Genox large format shredder to drive recycling operations in the Port Macquarie region and reduce the need for transport of recyclables to metropolitan centres.

Products/Services: Contact Details: ASC Head Office 1/14 Chicago Avenue Blacktown, NSW 2148 Phone: 02 8840 8888 Email: enquiries@acoatings.com.au Web: http://ascoatings.com.au Company Overview: ASC is a team of experienced coating and flooring professionals. We specialise in repairing and coating concrete and steel surfaces in harsh environments – waste handling, tipping sheds, chemical storage and high traffic surfaces. We are fully certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and AS 4801 Standards. When you call in ASC you get a professional, reliable team dedicated to solving your problems and delivering the best outcome, on time. We have a solutions-oriented approach

Diverseco

Company Overview: As one of Australia’s leading measurement and automation solutions providers, we at Diverseco pride ourselves on the sheer scope of our problem-solving expertise and supply of industry leading innovative technologies. We are heavily involved across a wide range of industries, with a comprehensive solutions portfolio specific for the waste management industry that includes both driver-specific solutions and robotic automation solutions for material recovery facilities. Products and Services: • Waste vehicle on-board payload optimisation and overload monitoring (Chain of Responsibility and legal-fortrade operations). • Weighbridges and portable truck scales for accurate vehicle weighing and accountability. 54

• Truck wheel washes for EPA and road safety compliance. • Automated waste sortation systems: comprehensive and completely automated robotic sortation systems for MRFs. Brands: • Waste Robotics • BinWeigh

• • • • • • • • • • • •

Tipping Shed Floor Resurfacing Chemical Bund Coating & Lining Concrete Repair & Remediation Corrosion Prevention Coatings High Traffic Surfaces Leachate Resistant Materials High Grip & Anti-Slip Coatings Waterproof Membranes Tank Lining Acid Resistant Coatings Expansion Joint Rebuilding & Sealing Water Treatment Plant Coatings

Recent Projects/Installations: TIPPING SHED FLOOR RESURFACING Banksmeadow, NSW Remediation of Eroded Concrete Slab 1500m² Leachate-Resistant Floor Surface CHEMICAL STORAGE AND PUMPING BUND Lidcombe, NSW Acid & Chemical Resistant Bund Re-lining Full Remediation of Bund Internal Surfaces

Hyva Pacific A fleet of service vehicles offers on-site solutions for all hydraulic, fabrication, electrical, air-conditioning and engineering requirements. Contact Details:

Products and Services:

72 Glenwood Drive Thornton, NSW, 2322 Phone: 02 4966 3777 Email: hyvapacific@hyva.com Web: www.hyva.com

• Waste Handling Equipment (Rear loaders / Compactors) • Hookloaders • Skiploaders • Vehicle Loading Cranes

Company Overview:

Core Capabilities:

Hyva Pacific is a leading provider of innovative and highly efficient transport solutions for the commercial vehicle and environmental service industries. Its products are used worldwide across a range of sectors including transport, construction, mining, materials handling and environmental services providers. HSR Southern Cross is the HYVA distributor for NSW and the exclusive Australian HYVA PRESS Waste Handling Equipment distributor. HSRSX is strategically located in Western Sydney.

Hyva /HSRSX is the ‘one stop shop’ for the commercial vehicle and waste handling industry, providing a wide range of high-quality equipment including installation, engineering, service and repair in our workshops or onsite.

Core Capabilities: At Diverseco, our core capabilities reside in our ongoing ability to meet and exceed customer requirements through our extensive problem-solving resources: we are ideal partners for any organisation looking to turn their operational problems into new, profitable capabilities. Contact Details: 3309 Logan Road Underwood, QLD, 4119 M: 1300 069 970 E: onboardsolutions@diverseco.com.au W: diverseco.com.au

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Contact Details: 35 Holbeche Rd, Arndell Park NSW 2148 Phone: 02 9725 3347 Email: admin@hsrsx.com.au Web: www.hsrsx.com.au

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

// Capabilities Statements

ResourceCo

Contact Details: ResourceCo Head Office Level 1, 162 Fullarton Road Rose Park, SA 5067 Phone: (08) 8406 0300 Email: enquiries@resourceco.com.au Web: www.resourceco.com.au Company Overview: ResourceCo (RC) is a global leader in the recovery and re-manufacture of primary resources, extracting maximum value from materials otherwise destined for landfill. Recent Projects/Installations: ESKINE PARK PLANT Operations commenced at Tyrecycle’s (RC’s tyre recycling division) new

multi-million-dollar plant at Erskine Park in Sydney in June 2021, producing in excess of 9000 tonnes of rubber crumb for the construction industry and providing a local circular economy solution to rubber waste. Additional new plants are also planned for Perth and the Pilbara in WA later this year.

Spartel Pty Ltd aspects organic waste processing from waste generation to soil beneficiation products, technology, process data processing and control, odour prevention and control

www.FAB-COM.com.au

Contact Details:

Products and Services:

Harrie - 0414 37 66 99 E: info@spartel.com.au W: www.FAB-COM.com.au

Products and Services:

Company Overview:

• C&D & C&I Recycling • Disposal, Treatment & Management of Contaminated Soils • Renewable Energy & Alternative Fuels • Tyre & Waste Rubber Recycling • Recycled Construction Material

Spartel Pty Ltd was founded in 1995 by Dr Harrie Hofstede, specialist waste management scientist in waste composting and pollution control. The company has a consulting arm, Hofstede & Associates, and waste technology R&D programme under the umbrella. The R&D has resulted in six patents in international markets. We have designed and developed two main large-scale composting systems under the FABCOM® Brand. FABCOM® Tunnels and the FABCOM® MAF system.

Brands: • • • • • • • •

ResourceCo Pty Ltd ResourceCo Material Solutions Southern Waste ResourceCo Cleanaway-ResourceCo SUEZ-ResourceCo ResourceCo Property Tyrecycle Pty Ltd Kariyarra Tyrecycle

• FABCOM® Tunnel compost plants • FABCOM® MAF composting system • Wireless data transmission and processing over a 2 km radius • Aeration controlled by process data • Remote access process control • Design and construct of compost plants • Development and optimisation of compost process and products • ODOROV™ effective odour control agent for organic waste • High nitrogen composts (4% N) Recent Projects/Installations: : FABCOM® MAF SUEZ Newcastle Raymond Terrace NSW Dedicated FABCOM® MAF aeration system for post Bedminster compost maturation & drying; Capacity 10,000 tpa

Core Capabilities: The overall core capability is all

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Mann and environment and recovery mechanism Trevor Evans Management Minis pleasing ss of the efforts job creation, Evans expla said it was and the Maritime for ter officials. said. to see how the ineffectivene ry to manage the issue. Minister foragainst natio measuring progress driver behin ined that this was “This is and the protection. some in both coun Recycling nating nal Coordinating a great outco world the d ointing that Coordi tries, packaging indust the strong 8, 2020, the be proud Issued every waste policy targe by the gover “unprecedented” “It is disapp me. We can Investment, to the chall at large, had Waste that tand that. passed in ON DECEMBER that of ts. actio Affairs and risen two years nment to all ion Bill was enge of did not unders to the Bill She told Inside to editio off, to take our efforts are , the 2020 the waste Maritime Affairs turbocharg n n focus feedi the Senate world’s popu thees on encouraging the amendment within the and Waste Reduct t amendment. paying and Ministry for care of our itan told e is extremely support for the statu lation durin ng the and B. Pandja withou to do the so that waste recycling industries, recycling However, it time, but the Bill ion of a desire for change.” the Senate g a tryin right thing own waste and in 2018-19, s of waste Indonesia Luhut inquiry into it had also of support “In our cities, is treated , analy was an indicat nity to deal with the g level senate Forum recyc a the t by ic e resou with sed see of sorti as a ling and exposed Despit the intrin rce which onthe and Labor, data ng our a per capit is not withou World Econom diverting some coastlines, Australian commum. sic weak can be recyc ts by the Greens away from a basis as remanufac However, Sloan to move forward. more wast ays and our as on state some of would and attemp led and well wasteand landf tured into our waterw the syste nesses within e on how that the to the Bill that packaging proble Findings the territory levels. of toxic plastic ms. valuable new produ Evans highl ill.” suggestions disappointing “Circular support the amendments bans coming and cover waste cts. accumulation “While it is economie pollution and on a single sourcesstrea created 3.3 ighted that Austr generation “With the export our food system models of meet He said that s fell through pass. address plastic alia , is harming per cent the need to food provi and other growing amendment this prote . fates ms, material categ sector did not in 2018-19 less wast peopleand environme in shortly, and WMRR is urging all including ning to see sioning cts the ories , toget n the recycling e ry, the compared health of our nt, creat her with indust community d in concer vote, it is hearte need to do more to measured al targets, es jobs and we can 07, the found to 2006trends ng fishing waste out how nation agric we the supp This has resulte boomi back about that ultur under that e “Our orted ry keeps of landfill. ation year e and coop to think consum world, is to 2006. consensus WARR indust national t in theWhile ing that we governments all comi of the “Our billio eratives, limited and within the to the data set. data second-larges marine ng to the ofthe n-dollar are ing with the tackle the packag commitment levels investmen fore,” she recycling “In effec ficant inves tprece risingsigni tackle packag “China is been given. of des the of. government’s pollution t, we each infrastruct t in new threat from said. that we’ve a leader tments in the amoun e is strong and dispose m of plastic 2025, that weig ure Byand produced the face in these resou seen to-dat recycling time to voluntary tools along with massive proble assurances hed oceans of the waste is changing areas waste plastic debris. 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How t technologies ntative of all action to be the first 2016-17 t in lia. to be recyc 24 full kegs the world taken, published io, dthe truly represe ng but not with cons country in we conn data set jobs in Austra Plastic Summi led,” he to no action is said. ect umers and chain, includi scenar in the Natio and create said. ry, to unprocesse ban the export of “However, the in the supply is clear,” Sloan this gloomy the supp nal users e e indust which COVID-19. Waste ing y around Despit messag ensu its d waste plast ly chain packag strateg “The res frustration approach is means that our growing popu s to addre and tyres developed a limited to the insecurity ic, paper, Much of the which we can ss-as-usual lation has been ss food the overa overseas Economic country has lians glass and tive ways in “The busine amendment thanks to ll amount national find produc ted at the World around wast also manage anymore. 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Equipment News //

Taking a load off – you can’t manage what you can’t measure By Inside Waste MAKING sure loads are the correct weight is key when collecting waste and taking it to landfills. Not only because landfills charge levies by weight, but because overloaded trucks are a danger to other road users and increase wear and tear on roadways and impair vehicle safety. Stuart Knight is the product manager for onboard weighing systems for Diverseco, a company that specialises in onboard vehicle weighing systems: from overload suspension systems to high accuracy underbody loadcells systems and trade-approved, charge-byweight systems. He has said that over the past few years he has seen charge-by-weight becoming dominant in the commercial waste sector, which is why Diverseco 56

has invested in products that can help companies make sure they are complying with standards and legislation. “We introduced the first tradeapproved “BinWeigh” system into Australia, which utilises Swiss technology and measures the weight of each loaded bin, providing net bin weights,” he said. “This information maximises charge-by-weight operations with highly accurate weight data and is appropriate for most front, rear, and side-lift loaders.” Tim Francis is Diverseco’s general manager for automation. He said it is also about making sure efficiencies are being met. “It would be fair to say of the onboard product, it’s not so specific to this segment within the waste sector but rather the waste collection component of it,” he said. “It is an

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

advantageous tool to those companies that hold that contracts for waste collection so that they can monitor efficiencies. They can monitor load runs to make sure they have maximum payload, but not too much - you don’t want to be running around with a half-empty truck. That is not good business sense. The scales are great, but ultimately it is the data that these systems yield that is empowering for the owner. Importantly, said Francis, the systems come with a crucial feature in that it helps clients achieve compliance under chain of responsibility legislation. “When you think about it, you’re going around in a truck and you’re picking up waste bins, and you’re throwing the content into the back of your truck,” he said. “If you don’t weigh that, you have no idea how

heavy your truck is becoming or how heavy it currently is. It could be full of milk bottles, in which case it could be light, or it could be full of house bricks, in which case you are probably overloaded.” Looking ahead with automation, Francis sees a big future for the technology in the industry. He thinks it will be a mixture of robotics and AI, however, there is still a lot of work to be carried out with the technology. “Robotic sortation will be entering more into industry as the artificial intelligence technology improves. To be fair, it is still very much in the developmental phase at the moment,” he said. “Most people in that space are looking for a partner where they grow that technology to a space where it is commercially viable because in reality there can be a significant ramp-up and learning time for the artificial

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

// Equipment News

In the future, robotics and AI will be used in the industry, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

intelligence to become effective. Waste is one of the most unstructured environments you will find; you never know what the next piece of gear is coming down the waste line on the conveyor. That is quite the puzzle for artificial intelligence to cope with. When you start looking at general waste or recyclables, I’m not sure how many robots you would need and I’m not sure how big the computer would be in order to handle the AI required to deal with all those things concurrently in the one environment” At the foundation of Francis’ point is data. Like a lot of industries – especially manufacturing and other industries – data is not only important in terms of the information it provides, but it can start to influence the bottom line in terms of identifying inefficiencies to be rectified. Waste is no different. “From the data perspective, people are using it for payment, which is absolutely crucial and paramount for the business,” he said. “Generally speaking, waste can be measured from a cubic volume perspective as well as from weight, and these measurements are often linked to customer, levy, and other payments. The method of measurement is often mandated by government or regulatory authorities. The higher the volume, the greater the likelihood that a legal-for-trade

weighing instrument will be required for measurement. “Modern day compliance standards, particularly when considering the EPA, requires record-keeping and traceability throughout the life cycle of the item, from cradle to grave – from point of manufacture to point of disposal. Weighing devices can be beneficial in automating and systemising the collection of this data to assist in meeting those compliance requirements.“ While people of a certain age remember how things used to be – no waste levies to tip your waste at the local landfill (it was covered by council rates), and there were incinerators in our back yard – the waste landscape has changed significantly since then, according to Francis. “One of the problems with waste in the past was that there was not enough money in it for people to do the right thing. Now there is. That situation has changed over time. As the prosperity has improved, so too have the penalties for not meeting requirements,” he said. “The governments and waste collectors themselves are really gearing up to take it to the next level and identifying the waste source, and fairly soon we’ll start to see the introduction of RFID tags on domestic bins. When a company comes and picks up your bin and throws it into the back of the

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

truck, they will know that it is yours. They’ll have cameras on there. They’ll record what waste was yours, and how much of it was it was yours. Even down to what was in the bin.” Knight said the company is working closely with councils and is seeing many changes within the industry when it comes to new technologies. “We work closely alongside vehicle suppliers and body builders for a

variety of applications, providing engineering support, with our national service team providing support for end users in the field. Chain of responsibility laws have drastically increased the need for overload protection systems, with major increases in uptake among local councils operating with small and large tippers, which can be easily overloaded.” iw

Soon, bins will have RFID tag so councils will know what you have thrown in your bin.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Equipment News //

KATflow 200 hand-held clamp-on ultrasonic flowmeter By Inside Waste THE KATflow 200 is a portable instrument that is a lightweight flowmeter that is easy to use and can be operated one-handed, which makes it a suitable tool for use in confined spaces or when working at height. The KATflow 200 flowmeter offers measurement performance normally associated with more complex devices and is complemented by the

quality and robustness of the Katronic transducers. The hand-held KATflow 200 has an array of features that make this versatile instrument unique for a meter of its size. It is available with a choice of robust stainless-steel transducers to cover many temperature ranges between -30 °C to +250 °C and provides an autonomy of 24 hours using the convenience of NiMH AA

batteries. It can be supplied with three different transport case options to suit customer requirements, has a large internatal data logger and an optional wall thickness gauge. The KATflow 200 has many application is various industries, building services, pharmaceuticals, food production, water and waste water, power generation and general industries. iw

The flowmeter is suitable for confined spaces.

Macpresse MAC/2 baler series By Inside Waste FOLLOWING the launch of its MAC/1 baling press machines series in 2001, Macpresse launched its new MAC/2 multi-material baler series in 2016. The MAC/2 supersedes the previous MAC/1 baler’s performance with better efficiency, as well as improved volume reduction to optimise waste transport and management costs. The new series is designed for recycling, biomass and refuse derived fuels industries. Jakob Becker, is a German company the specialises in the secondary raw materials treatment, and at the time had been a Macpresse customer for four years. A pioneer in waste treatment that, with more than 100 years of business experience, ranks as one of the first German companies of the sector in

terms of turnover. In 2012, Jakob Becker discovered Macpresse and has been using the equipment since that time. First, it purchased a MAC 111/1 baling press machine, then a MAC 107/1 and after that a MAC 110/1. In 2016, Jakob Becker, chose a baling press machine from the latest MAC/2 series “MAC baling press machines have a simple design, they are strong, easy to manage and reliable,” said Thomas Becker, owner and CEO of Jakob Becker. “Over four years of business experience, management costs have always been low, and machines have never stopped working. When Macpresse presented its new /2 series, we had no doubts and chose a MAC 110/2 with a conveyor belt for our most important plant.” Jakob Becker’s faith is repaid by

The Mac 107/2 is suitable for the recycling, biomass and refuse-derived fuels industries.

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

a top-quality machine, designed to meet the requirements of a developing market. “You just need to replace the blades to bale different materials with the same machine: plastic, paper, biomass and refuse derived fuel (RDF),” said Becker. “This allows us to optimise bale processing and makes the new baling press machines ideal to treat different types of waste.” MAC/2 balers have large load dimensions to assist entry of very voluminous materials. Another feature is the XL channel: longer extrusion channel (+1.5 m) for better bale density. Macpresse has always designed solutions able to reduce management, energy and transport costs. The new series was designed to further enhance these feature with: • Volume optimisation due to bale format – the bale format obtained with the MAC/2 baling press machines makes the best use of space in the ordinary means of transport, such as trucks, thus reducing transport and storage costs. • Easy maintenance – the baling press machines of the new series are safer and easier to clean for operators. • More efficient tying system – the MAC/2 baling press machine is equipped with a new and highefficiency electromechanical tying system that allows to reach +50% tying speed (cycle) and to tie bales both with plastic and iron wire.

• R educed energy costs – the cutting system has been redesigned for better bale integrity and lower energy consumption. Also, the hydraulic system has been renewed and is equipped with a highefficiency IE3 motor allowing a 30 per cent increase in energy savings as compared to traditional motors • Reduced labour costs – the new baling press machine presents higher levels of automation than the previous series, therefore requiring fewer operators to manage and service the baler “MAC/2 is the result of 15 years of dialogue, research and collaboration among Macpresse, its customers and international agents,” said Giuliano Scotuzzi, Macpresse export sales manager, “Our work was aimed at a steady improvement in order to meet the needs of a dramatically changing market. “The result is a series with even more performance than the previous version and 10 per cent stronger.” The MAC/2 series comes in three models specifically conceived to meet the constantly changing waste treatment market demands. Furthermore, MAC 107/2 is designed for companies pursuing medium production while simultaneously striving for high production standards at a low cost. The new series is suitable for recycling, biomass and refuse derived fuels industries because, using the same baling press, you can bale everything. iw

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Young Professional //

Shocking introduction leads to great career choice AS with a lot of people, having a job in the waste industry wasn’t originally in Maya Deacock’s plans when setting out her career path. Graduating with a Bachelor of Science (Hons) degree from the University of New South Wales, Deacock said that even though as a kid she had an ecological bent, the waste industry wasn’t really on her radar. Like a lot of young graduates, once university was finished, Deacock went over to the UK for a couple of years. When she arrived back in the country she caught up with a friend who was working at waste management specialist consulting company, MRA Consulting. After a three-month internship, she had a full time job and hasn’t looked back. “I had never really thought about working in the waste industry to be honest, apart from putting my bins out on the street,” she said. “My grandfather was very big into conservation, so I was always leaning towards that. Before I reconnected with my friend, I was applying for ecology-type scientific roles all across Sydney. When I ran into him he said, ‘we have a waste audit coming up, if you’re interested, you are welcome to come along and try your hand’. “It was a very shocking introduction into waste because it was pretty gross. You are rummaging through tonnes of rubbish, and while it’s not very nice it certainly is an eye opener as to what people are throwing out. It is amazing the number of things that end up in a recycling bin that shouldn’t be there. Before doing that I had never really thought about what was in my bin. I started working for MRA and I loved it. MRA are committed to a more sustainable economy and that sits well with my values.” Part of her job is with the planning team, who help developers, landowners, and lease holders to get the relevant approvals they need to move forward on a project. This is particularly important when it comes to waste management plans – whereby the team assists with waste strategies and planning for a building, as well as help them get the best outcome in terms of waste management and sustainability. It is a fulfilling job. “I like that I can help out people in a concrete way,” she said. “You can see 60

the impact you are having on people. You drive down the street and you see one of the developments you worked on a DA for, and you know exactly what their waste strategy is like, such as getting everyone up to date with Green Star and all these industry standards. Even helping councils with their development control plans is an interesting aspect of the job. It is basically bringing everyone up to this great standard.” Deacock finds that councils are generally onside when it comes to making the best of the environment. She said that they especially hold themselves to a high standard when it comes to making sure compliance is being adhered to by the various stakeholders. However, there is always room for improvement, especially when it comes to legislation and policy clarity. “Councils always have that attitude of looking forward – ‘what is the next big environmental standard that we can reach?’,” she said. “It is important to have clear wording around policy to ensure there is no confusion about things. “For example, we were having this conversation in the office about the energy-from-waste policy and what does and doesn’t apply and how some of it seems ambiguous. State governments need to be much clearer about what they want from councils and residents in terms of creating a sustainable or circular economy.” On the other end of the spectrum there are people – such as some developers – without even being prompted, are trying to find the best environmental outcomes for their sites. Gone are the days of developers looking for the easiest and cheapest way to get from point A to point B on a project. “You see it all in this line of work. For the most part, everyone is generally very compliant. They might even have their own internal standards. ESD (Environmentally Sustainable Development) is very big, and it is growing. Especially as climate change reports are coming out and it is getting a lot more focus,” said Deacock. Does Deacock find it a fulfilling career considering she never really thought about it until that fateful run-

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

Deacock said there needs to be more clarity around what state governments want from local councils..

in with a friend? “Absolutely,” she said. “I fell into waste by chance, but I think I will be definitely staying in it as a career. I don’t see it going anywhere in terms of this industry declining or petering out. It is an essential service. Even five, 10, 15 years down the track there are going to be continual challenges coming up.” Any advice for those that are thinking of coming into the industry? Deacock recommends getting an internship first, like she did. Doing so will give a person an excellent perspective on how the industry works. She also believes that an important part of starting out is sitting back and listening to what is being said. “Go to as many meetings as you can and sit there and take notes,” said Deacock. “I was very lucky to attend a very early business development meeting with my boss when I was still an intern. And we are still working with that client three years later. I came into the industry with a blank

slate and didn’t know anything about waste. I had the environmental background but that was it. As well as attending as many meetings as you can, go to online seminars and listen to what is being said. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. There is no such thing as a silly question, and nobody will think any less of you for asking one. “Also, try out things. For example, I didn’t know about financial modelling before starting at MRA and you get chucked in the deep end – writing business cases and things like that. In a small company you get to work on many diverse different projects. I’ve flown to Alice Springs to help them start up a composting program. You get to put your hand up and say, ‘I’m interested, can I help out, and what can I do?’ “There is a lot to know. I am now getting to the stage where I am feeling confident about my background knowledge in waste, but it takes time.” iw

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

// Product Profiles Balers, Windshifters and Compactors

CSS Equipment

Hammel RED GIANT VB950DK

EHSR RC0914 Hard Waste Rear Loading Compactor

Company: Hammel Recyclingtechnik (CSS Equipment) Product name: VB Primary Shredder Speed (slow/high): Twin Shaft – Slow Speed Throughput: 200tph+ Suitable material: All Waste Types Drive type: Diesel or Electric No. shafts/speed: Twin Shaft/Slow Speed up to 40rpm Hopper Size: Up to 16 cubic metres Unit Dimensions: TBC Weight (tonnes): Up to 66 tonnes No. of units in range: 6 Models Base price: $250,000 + GST For more info: www.cssequipment.com.au or 1800 644 978

Company: Ecostar (CSS Equipment) Product name: Hextra Model Unit dimensions: 4 to 7 Metres long. Weight: 17 - 22 tonnes on crawler tracks Motor: Diesel/Electric Screens material this size: Various (double or triple fractions) Screen type: Dynamic (Hardox Discs) Designed for (material): All Waste Materials Throughput: Up to 200tph+ Base price: Contact CSS Equipment For more info: www. cssequipment.com.au or 1800 644 978

HYVA

CSS Equipment

Ecostar Hexact Screens

Company: HSR Southern Cross Model name: HSR RC0914 Hard Waste Rear Loading Compactor. Unit Dimensions: 4,818mm Long, 2,245mm Wide, 1,951mm Heigh (above chassis) Weight: 4,520kg Drive Type: Hydraulicly Driven via PTO Motor: N/A Rotor diameter/lengths/speed: N/A Speed (slow/high): Compaction Cycle Time 20 Seconds Suitable material: All Domestic and Commercial Waste Streams, Hard Waste Clean-up. No. of units in range: 6 Throughput: N/A Finished product size: 24m3 Options/Extras: Available upon request Price: TBA More: HSR RC0914 Hard Waste Specification Body with 14m³ capacity body, plus tailgate, with upgraded sweep and packer panels and HARDOX 450 lined hopper bowl and side walls. These units are by far the most heavy-duty rear load compaction units on the market. The overall Tailgate volume is 2.14m³ with a hopper swept volume of 1.5m³ water Level capacity. The HSR strength configurations will achieve both domestic collections, as well as handle the most destructive curb side collections of waste with ease. Inspection of our Sydney (Arndell Park) manufacturing and installation facility is offered at any time convenient to inspect how these truly unique compaction units are manufactured. Price: From $220,000 More: www.hsrsx.com.au, Ph: 0499 944 969

Ecohog Mobile Windshifter

Unit Dimensions: 14385 mm x 5900 mm x 3722 mm Weight: 4045,000 kg Drive Type: Main Motors Power Motor: 2 x 75kw Rotor diameter/ lengths/speed: 170 tonne cutting and thrust power Speed (slow/ high): 2 x 100 HP Suitable material: PET, OCC, RDF, Mix Paper No. of units in range: 2 Throughput: PET 10t/h, OCC 18t/h, RDF 33t/h, Mix Paper 30t/h Designed for (material): Baling PET, OCC, RDF, Mix Paper Price: POA More: www.cemactech.com, 03 84006066 or info@cemactech.com

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

CSS Equipment

Cemec Technologies Pty Ltd

Macpresse Baler 108/2

Model name: EH-1500 TWS (Mobile Windshifter) Unit Dimensions: Contact CSS Equipment Weight: From 8.5 tonnes Drive Type: Genset (CAT) Motor: CAT 100KvA Suitable material: Light and Heavy Waste Materials No. of units in range: 2 Models (Static & Mobile) Throughput: Dependant on Material Type & Density Designed for (material): Separating Light Materials from Heavy Materials. Options/Extras: Static or Mobile, with Metal Separation. Price: From $220,000.00 AUD More: CSS Equipment Pty Ltd Info@cssequipment.com.au / 1800 644 978

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021 INSIDEWASTE

Wasted Space //

Giving (certain) states a break MORNING Sir, I hope all is well up in our green and fair land. Well, the numbers keep coming out, and I’m beginning to wonder if some states will see it through. While 80 per cent seems like a tall target, surely if we all pull together and see it through, we can hit that milestone, necessary for the future of this country to move forward. Of course, I’m talking about the 80 per cent land fill diversion target that the federal government set a while back. Should be easy to get reach, right? Well, not necessarily. While some of the states seem to be doing okay, there are some recidivist offenders that might not make it? Currently, the two struggling the most are WA and Queensland. Their current rates are hovering around the 30 per cent mark (a bit like 006’s

assessment at the shooting range I hear – I told him to stay off the G&T’s the night before, but you can take the man out of Knightsbridge, but not Knightsbridge out of the man it seems). That means they will have to triple their recovery rates at the same time that the likes of NSW only need to bump their current 65 per cent by 15 per cent. A hard task for even the most determined WA/ Queensland premier. At the risk of sounding condescending, I can’t help but wonder if the governments of those two states are their own worst enemies. In the case of Queensland, well, they certainly are the masters of the own downfall. Former premier Campbell Newman decided to scrap the landfill levy all together. Made sense at the time of course – Queensland has more holes to fill than a 9/11 conspiracy theory due to

INSIDEWASTE OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2021

the amount of mining that has gone on in the state. Why not encourage them to be filled? Very logical. Of course, the next government to come in decided to reinstate the levy, but still at a hugely discounted rate compared to its southern neighbour. Yet, this is the real kicker – instead of using the levy as a stick to try and encourage landfill diversion, the state government decided to use it as a carrot instead. They pay councils 105 per cent of the value that they spend sending stuff to landfill. Yeah, a real disincentive, not! That is the power of rate payers, Sir. Governments – both state and local – are too scared to make the right call. Not too sure who the brain surgeon was who decided that little nugget was a good idea. That’s akin to asking our old Soviet friends to introduce just a little capitalism

into their economy – would kind of undermine the whole point of their system. But here is another idea. All things are not created equal. Maybe the Federal Government should give those lagging behind a little more time to catch up. Not much, mind you. Maybe another one to two years? Just to make sure they do it properly. Sure, there’ll be the odd whinging and whining from the states who have got their houses in order, but that’s nothing new either. We know WA and Queensland are a bit like the Gloucestershire of country cricket, not that successful but they do try hard. Anyway, that’s all from me this time around, Sir. Time for high-tea at the MCG – precursor to the cricket season kicking off down here. iw JB

Daily news updates at www.insidewaste.com.au

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Inside Waste Oct/Nov 2021

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Waste Innovation