As infrastructure projects are being increasingly held to account on the disclosure and minimisation of their environmental impacts, ResourceCo has developed a new tool to support industry and its decision to use recycled products.
To break down barriers for the use of recycled products, it’s crucial that the resource recovery industry can prove the benefits of their use.
Claiming that recycled products are simply “better” is not enough, says Brad Lemmon, ResourceCo’s Chief Executive Officer, Recycling and Waste.
This is why ResourceCo is putting its hand up to be held accountable, by developing Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for its recycled products range.
Brad says that EPDs are a critical tool as end users seek to understand the environmental impacts and emissions associated with the products they consume.
“It’s one thing to talk about recycled products having environmental benefits, but not all products can prove that,” he says.
“These EPDs provide independently verified environmental impact data associated with the manufacture of our range of recycled products.
“It provides our customers with a very high degree of confidence that the sustainability and environmental benefits we’re attributing to our products are bona fide.”
ResourceCo is a leader in the recovery and remanufacturing of primary resources, extracting value from materials otherwise destined for landfill.
One of Australia’s most diversified recyclers, the company is capable of recovering resources from construction and demolition (C&D), commercial and industrial wastes, soils, and tyres. At its Lonsdale and Wingfield facilities in South Australia, along with its Brooklyn and Hampton Park sites in Victoria, ResourceCo collects and processes C&D waste into a range of concrete aggregates, drainage aggregates, rubbles, and road base materials, as well as clean, wet and mixed fill.
In 2023 ResourceCo began the rigorous process of developing EPDs for recycled products manufactured at these facilities. EPDs are independently verified and registered centrally with EPD Australasia. They document the cradle-to-gate life cycle of the end-product, and quantify the environmental impacts at each stage.
Environmental impact data can include the consumption of energy, water and renewable resources, emissions to air, water and soil, and contributions to climate change.
ResourceCo’s Environmental Development Manager, Mitchell Bacon said the aim is to build an internal dataset of ResourceCo’s products and their environmental benefits, enabling end users to seamlessly compare recycled products with their virgin material counterparts.
“Not all recycled products in the market have had the same degree of rigour applied to them to ensure their benefits stack up,” he says.
“EPDs aren’t just a measure of environmental impact for the end-user. Internally, they help us identify opportunities to address inefficient processes, over consumption, and energy wastage.
“If we have an inefficient process that is consuming a lot of energy or recovering resources in a sub-optimal manner, the sustainability benefits can be significantly diminished. ResourceCo has led the process for EPDs because they are an important way to independently verify and demonstrate credibility within the market.”
Brad says ResourceCo is manufacturing products that are specified and certified to use in major road projects. The EPD-verified products have supported projects managed under road management authorities, including VicRoads and the Department of Infrastructure and Transport in South Australia.
But while the quality of the product is at least as good as its virgin material counterpart, and in some instances superior, one of the historical criticisms of recycled content products is that they don’t deliver on performance and quality benefits. ResourceCo has developed a rigorous quality assurance program as part of its commitment to demonstrating the capabilities of recycled materials.
“Demonstrating the technical capability and performance reliability of recycled products is one thing. Going a step further and quantifying the associated environmental performance is something else entirely,” Brad says.
“Just like testing the physical properties of recycled products, it’s important to have robust processes behind sustainability data too.
“By developing EPDs, we’re validating those sustainability credentials. We need to be able to show the market, our customers, that they are not only getting a product that meets or exceeds technical performance but also has significant sustainability attributes too.”
That validation is also helping customers who are increasingly under similar pressures to demonstrate their own sustainability efforts. That became more crucial when the Federal Government introduced Australia’s first Environmentally Sustainable Procurement Policy on 1 July 2024.
Under the policy, businesses bidding for government construction service projects above $7.5 million must meet agreed sustainability outcomes, such as reducing or repurposing waste and replacing quarried or single-use materials with recycled materials.
Brad says the procurement policy will propel the use of high-quality recycled content and deliver more innovation. Based on having EPDs in the market, ResourceCo is already receiving inquiries for additional and more bespoke products such as specialist blends or flexible pavements.
ResourceCo is rolling out EPDs for its road construction materials and is looking to expand these assessments into other recycled products.
“EPDs are a high bar to get over, it’s not an easy hurdle to clear and not all organisations will be able to deliver. But ResourceCo believes it’s an important mechanism in ensuring there is transparency and accountability,” Brad says.
“We believe this is where the market is going and it’s helping to differentiate the organisations that can meet those standards.”
For more information, visit:
www.resourceco.com.au
