Cleanaway’s Mark Globan explains how the company’s new south-east Melbourne transfer station aligns with the Victorian Government’s Statewide Waste and Resource Recovery Infrastructure Plan.
The Victorian Government has a consolidation and sorting of waste and Post Collections Victoria/Tasmania, vision to achieve an integrated system of waste management and resource recovery infrastructure, and Cleanaway believes its new transfer station, due to open in May 2017, supports the model well.
Strategic planning is now being undertaken by industry across the state to support the plan.
Statutory authority Sustainability Victoria, who released its Statewide Waste and Resource Recovery Infrastructure Plan (SWRRIP) plan in 2015, also expects the number of transfer stations to increase over the next 30 years, as landfills, particularly in Melbourne’s south-east, reach capacity.
This will work in favour of a model increasingly focused on resource recovery, supported by fewer but larger and more modern landfills around the state, allowing ongoing material streams.
This will ultimately bring Victoria’s waste management and resource recovery activities, together in a network of “hubs and spokes”. Hubs are defined as a facility or group of facilities managing waste and material streams (such as a landfill), while spokes are the sequence of activities that move materials from waste generators to and from hubs, including collection, transport and sorting.
“In the long term, the role of landfills will be to manage waste streams that cannot be viably recovered,” the plan goes on to say.
According to the SWRRIP, total waste generation in Victoria is projected to almost double from 12.2 million tonnes in 2011 to 20.6 million tonnes in 2043-44.
Mark Globan, Regional Manager explains that Cleanaway’s new state-of-the-art transfer station supports the Government’s plan – as the company’s landfills in Melbourne’s south-east begin entering the phase of post-closure management.
“Our Clayton landfills will be closed by the end of June this year. However, by May, our transfer station in Dandenong will be operational. That will act as a consolidation point for waste, and our vehicles will transfer the material from Dandenong to our Melbourne Regional Landfill (MRL) at Deer Park, for disposal,” Mark says.
Mark is responsible for the management of Cleanaway’s Melbourne’s landfills (active and rehabilitated), transfer station network, resource recovery and organics businesses.
I make sure we’re running efficiently in our resource recovery, building that capacity and increasing our recovery rates. I am also responsible for a network of Transfer Stations which support Sustainability Victoria’s SWRRIP and the hub and spoke model it outlines.
“Our new facility absolutely supports that model as it will become a consolidation point for waste.”
Mark says Cleanaway’s new transfer facility will be used by commercial customers and councils to transfer their kerbside collections.
He says as the population increases, Cleanaway is positioning itself to provide the critical infrastructure required in order to manage Melbourne’s waste well into the future.
“One of our goals is to provide efficient buffers and protection overlays through the government’s planning mechanisms, and make sure they’re engineered to handle the increase in volumes and future technology needs.”
Mark says part of the new transfer station involves the closure of the landfill and the rehabilitation of the company’s Victory Road landfill in Melbourne’s south-east.
To read more, see page 14 of Issue 11.