Western Australia’s waste and recycling industry is pulling its weight to reach national targets, but the state needs a customised recycling model tailored to its unique geography, says Michael Bobrowicz, Executive Officer of Waste and Recycling Industry Association of Western Australia.
Watching the Senate Environment Committee hearing held in Sydney in May 2024: Inquiry into waste reduction and recycling policies, it probably escaped most people’s attention that what they were hearing and seeing was almost entirely an east coast view. Not to imply that there are no common issues between eastern and western sides, because there are, but there are also many significant differences that simply didn’t get an airing.
The East Rockingham and Kwinana waste-to-energy (WtE) power plants in outer Perth are about to come online, with a combined capacity of 700,000 tonnes.
No fuss, no bother with both plants; they are appropriately sited and will operate under State Government-mandated emissions standards.
The Acciona plant at Kwinana was to start taking in feedstock in late June. Together, the two plants will play an important role in achieving the state’s waste strategy.
It was timely that in late May, the Western Australian Waste Authority issued its Waste Avoidance and Resource Recovery Strategy 2030 Consultation Draft. This draft document contains the clearest statement industry has yet seen on WtE, including the headline: Recover energy only from residual waste designed to ensure WtE feedstock is not recyclable material that should be recovered from higher in the value chain.
Jim Fairweather, Chief Executive Officer of Tyrecycle, was in Perth in May to officially open the company’s tyre recycling plant in East Rockingham. With a capacity of 40,000 tonnes, including 7000 tonnes of crumbed rubber, and with a further feeder plant targeting the mining industry planned for Port Hedland.
Joint federal and state funding of $5.2 million supported the building of this plant and is widely regarded in Western Australia as one of the best applications of the Recycling Modernisation Fund to date.
Go Organics is mid-way through increasing the capacity of its Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) processing facility at Gingin, assisted by a $3.5 million grant from the federal Food Waste for Healthy Soils fund, allowing the processing of an additional 75,000 tonnes of organic waste each year.
Mastec is rolling out 80,000 new lime-topped mobile garbage bins (MGB’s) to Perth local government areas to keep up with the FOGO expansion.
Cleanaway has built Australia’s first “post China National Sword” materials recovery facility (MRF) at Guildford. The MRF can process up to 200,000 tonnes of recyclables per year and recover up to 90 per cent of reusable product while delivering up to 99.5 per cent purity across fibre and plastic outputs.
Containers for Change, already approaching 64 per cent container recovery, is now extending its focus to mine site operations where tens of millions of eligible containers are consumed. Trial container recovery projects at two large mine sites in the Pilbara are underway to capture those containers and avoid sending them to landfill.
REMONDIS Australia is installing a soft plastics pelletising unit that converts old plastics to top-quality pellets with a capacity of 5000 tonnes per annum.
Meanwhile, on the government side, since Main Roads WA (MRWA) put in place the Roads to Reuse (RTR) program four companies in Western Australia have completed the required quality assurance (QA) certification. Together, they have capacity to recover 400,000 tonnes per annum of QA-certified crushed recycled concrete (CRC) and one million tonnes of recovered sand. MRWA has mandated the use of 500,000 tonnes of RTR product in 2023-24.
Western Australia is currently the only state in Australia with unified statewide guidelines for what can and can’t go in both a FOGO and a yellow-topped recycling bin, removing the massive confusion that results when each local government area has its own specification.
It’s clear Western Australia still has a long way to go, but it’s also clear that the state’s waste and recycling industry is more than pulling its weight, as measured against any objective standard.
It doesn’t help, however, when policy makers at a federal level are focused on a model that simply is not viable in the west.
Western Australia is the largest state by area, and the logistics of collecting recyclables are formidable but never considered by national policy. The state is geographically isolated from recycling hubs located in eastern Australia, transport distances are too large, and recyclers are unable to access synergies to support secondary recycling.
It is questionable if Western Australia has sufficient tonnages of some product to support an economically viable stand-alone secondary recycling industry. The value of recyclables has declined in the state since the inception of export bans, and recyclers are transporting material to New South Wales and South Australia to secondary processing facilities to gain export licences. At which point, the carbon footprint of moving those recyclables has negated any recovery benefit.
Australia is a federation of states, with each state uniquely delivering solutions that fit local conditions. The Federal Government has responsibility for the country, including Australia’s relationship with the rest of the world. Mostly this works out, or at least it’s a constant interplay and negotiation.
Western Australia has a unique commercial advantage, and that is its proximity to Asia, one of the largest markets in the world. Unfortunately, the Recycling and Waste Reduction Act and export bans have negated that advantage.
One size doesn’t fit all, and progressive Australian governments need to understand that ‘same’ is not necessarily equal. Western Australia needs a customised recycling model that focuses on its unique geography, and above all it needs a model that is flexible and responsive to differing market conditions.
There is no one single perfect answer to how Australia achieves an 80 per cent recycling target, but stifling innovation across Western Australia won’t help.