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Victoria’s Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has filed charges following an investigation over a toxic chemical waste industrial fire that burnt for several days creating smoke across the western suburbs in August 2018.
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AWRE set to return in November

The Australasian Waste and Recycling Expo (AWRE) is set to return this November, reimagined and launched as an interactive online event making it accessible to everyone, irrespective of geography or social distancing rules, to run as planned on 25-26 November 2020.

The AWRE 2020 reimagined online event has been established to offer the flexibility to connect while staying apart, learn and hear from the industry’s best as we navigate a changing world.

The online event will provide the waste and recycling industry with a new way to interact and communicate through thought leadership webinars, keynote sessions, breakouts and product launches. More than just an online event – it will be an online interactive experience providing attendees with an engaging experience that is easy to navigate.

“A natural extension to our existing face to face event, AWRE 2020 reimagined as an online event enables companies to continue to interact with our engaged buying audiences, sharing expertise, showcasing brand credentials and building relationships with customers, even in these unprecedented times,” Bill Hare, AWRE Commercial Director said.

“Our well-respected speaker series has provided the waste and recycling industry with continued innovative, informative and industry leading content over the last 10 years and 2020 will be no different. Attendees can join from all around the world with access to top-tier presenters. It will be incredibly powerful to create meaningful connections as distance is no longer a barrier for connecting people.”

Explore and be a part of a world of solutions this November. Stay up to date here.

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Unlocking the value in organics: Veolia

Veolia highlights the company’s comprehensive strategy and range of technologies to work towards a circular economy by diverting organics waste from landfill across Australia. 

Waste and recycling has never been more topical across the Australian political and public landscape.

With international recycling markets closing their doors to Australian recyclable exports, governments are encouraging the development of viable recycling markets within our shores.

This has included putting in place stronger policies to increase the diversion of organic waste from landfill.

An example is Victoria’s recently released Recycling Victoria strategy which included a $129 million package for kerbside reform.

This announcement included a target for 100 per cent of households to have access to separate food and organics recovery service or composting by 2030, as well as halving the volume of organic material going to landfill by 50 per cent between 2020 and 2030.

Over in NSW, the government is targeting net zero emissions from organic waste to landfill by 2030, with a variety of supporting policies.

The trends across organics diversion are welcome news for leading environmental solutions organisation Veolia, which has been at the forefront of sector innovation for decades.

Laurie Kozlovic, Chief Innovation and Strategic Development Officer, Veolia Australia and New Zealand, says organics recovery is firmly part of its business strategy to ‘Resource the World’.

“For Veolia, it is not only about landfill diversion, but importantly, improving soil health which is extremely relevant in an Australian context,” he says.

Veolia’s Bulla Organics Facility turns thousands of tonnes of organic waste into high-quality compost.

Carbon storage in soil offers a host of ecological benefits such as release of nutrients, water retention, and absorption of organic and/or inorganic pollutants.

Its sequestration also supports other ecosystem services derived from soils, such as farming production, drinking water supply and biodiversity.

This occurs by increasing the amount of organic matter in the soil, thus improving its quality.

The Rabobank 2019 Food waste report identified that food waste costs Australians $10 billion annually.

Of course, the approach to tackling the problem is to avoid the generation of organic waste in the first instance, and education is key.

Once organic waste is generated however, the right technology and capability can provide numerous beneficial circular economy and climate resilient outcomes.

In Australia, Veolia operates a comprehensive range of technologies including a number of in-vessel composting facilities as well as an anaerobic digestion facility which produces both electricity and fertiliser.

Veolia’s compost products are beneficially reused in a number of urban amenity, agriculture, rehabilitation and environmental remediation applications across the country.

Additionally, the company collects organic waste from its broad customer base which includes councils, commercial and industrial businesses.

This experience also extends to its water business where organics such as biosolids are managed and beneficially reused.

Laurie says that removing organics from landfill crucially reduces carbon emissions. He adds that equally, compost plays an important role in providing food security, improving soil carbon and crop productivity, and reducing the effects of drought.

“Organic waste recycling is a great example of how we can value the inherent properties of waste and keep the materials circulating through the economy,” he says.

Additionally, Laurie says that identifying the waste streams for recovery early on enables the right infrastructure to be developed. The end result is an integrated and holistic solution crucial for any zero waste ambition.

With organics recycling rates being around 52 per cent in Australia, there is ample opportunity for improvement and innovation.

Mark Taylor, Head of Solid Waste Treatment, Veolia ANZ, says that the best outcomes are when customers take ownership of their wastes from a process and recovery point of view. He says this then becomes a prime partnership for finding optimal solutions together.

Veolia’s innovations include Soil Advisor – an app that has been in development internationally for a number of years through Veolia’s agronomic hub.

It provides farmers with a tool to optimise compost application by analysing the long-term effect of the compost. Importantly, it looks at compost’s impact on changes to soil organic matter and soil carbon storage.

This digital tool supports the international “4 per 1000, Soils for Food Security and Climate” initiative launched during COP21 in late 2015.

The idea is that a four per cent annual increase in the amount of carbon in all soils worldwide would compensate for yearly increases in human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

An example is Veolia’s partnership with iugis Group, for the exclusive distribution of onsite organic food digester technologies, including the ORCA product in Australia and New Zealand.

The mobile, onsite organic digester solution is suitable for customers in a range of market sectors.

The iugis technology mimics a natural digestion process, biologically converting organic food waste into liquid tradewaste.

It supports landfill diversion as well as providing an on-site solution for Veolia customers that may be in remote or rural areas, or some distance away from a dedicated composting facility.

As with all waste issues, a systematic and comprehensive approach is needed to deliver meaningful outcomes.

Veolia is ready to work further with governments, businesses and communities to convert the various organics policy ambitions, as well as their customer objectives into practical and relevant solutions.

However, Mark says Veolia needs all stakeholders to work together to create the framework and conditions necessary for the actions to be successful.

“Veolia will invest, however we need stable and reasonable policy, regulatory and contractual conditions. These conditions will enable long term and sustainable investments which are value creating for all partners,” Mark says.

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Industry responds to QLD Energy from Waste policy

The Queensland Government has released its highly anticipated Energy from Waste (EfW) policy following a webinar with the state’s Environment Minister, Leeanne Enoch.

Enoch hosted a ‘lunch with the Queensland Environment Minister’ via zoom last week due to social distancing restrictions, to announce the EfW policy and how it will play a key role within the waste and resource recovery system across the state.

The EfW policy aims to capture embodied energy from residual materials that would otherwise have been landfilled, as Queensland transitions towards a circular economy.

Enoch gave a candid update of the current state of play in Queensland, noted that the policy aligns with both the waste management hierarchy as well as Queensland’s strategic priorities, and provides industry with certainty on how EfW will be regulated and assessed in the state.

As well as establishing an EfW hierarchy to address the differing technologies available, the policy outlines seven outcomes to guide proponents on how environmental authority applications for EfW facilities will be assessed and regulated, detailing requirements that will need to be met to demonstrate operational performance of proposed facilities.

Gayle Sloan, Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association Australia (WMRR) CEO, said QLD’s EfW policy is a “very sensible and well considered document”.

She said EfW draws on international best practice, resisting the temptation that WMRR have seen in other Australian jurisdictions to create poorly thought out interventions that impact confidence and investment.

“The release of the document is a positive step towards offering EfW proponents some much-needed certainty, offering clear pathways to EfW, and importantly, a clear expectation about community engagement and social license,” Sloan said.

“All these steps are pivotal in rebuilding the economy and creating local jobs in the post-COVID world that we are building.”

Mark Smith, Waste Recycling Industry Queensland (WRIQ) CEO, agrees that the EfW policy provides an important building block for the Queensland waste and resource recovery sector and importantly sets out expectations from government to market.

However, Smith said a key challenge for state and local government and the private sector, who are the largest funders of infrastructure in Queensland and Australia, will be how the changes and improvements to waste and recycling management is communicated to the Queensland community.

“Recent research from CSIRO tells us that in order for community to trust and accept upgrades to waste facilities or new facilities being establish, is their confidence in the industry and their confidence in the government bodies regulating the sector,” he said.

“WRIQ is committed to improving the sector’s public brand and wants to ensure our members are supported by government when they decide to make investments to support the Queensland economy.”

Smith said it’s really important that government understand and recognise their role in building community awareness around the “role our sector plays in maintaining the economy and maintaining our way of life”.

WRIQ has congratulated the Queensland Government for releasing the policy and the commitment to releasing further guidance at the end of the year.

Sloan said that WMRR also appreciates the Queensland Department of Environment and Science’s (DES) strong engagement with the industry in the establishment of this policy.

“We look forward to the development of further detail on how industry can meet EfW requirements in Queensland, utilising what we know is international best practice, including the EU Waste Directives,” she said.

Smith said WRIQ will reach out to DES to also support the development process of the policy.

According to WMRR, during the webinar, Enoch also reassured attendees that resource recovery is at the forefront of many of the government’s decisions, acknowledging that the essential waste and resource recovery sector is a vital stakeholder and contributor to Queensland’s post-COVID economic recovery, particularly as the industry will be able to provide home grown manufacturing opportunities.

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First organic waste project to power VIC

The Victorian Government has announced two Renewable Organics Network projects to reduce waste going to landfill by using organic waste to produce electricity.
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