Feedback wanted on circular economy

THE City of Greater Bendigo is asking the community for its opinions on waste management, as it begins work to transition to a circular economy.

With the Eaglehawk landfill site set to reach capacity in a couple of years, the municipality is exploring all options on how waste can be managed and potentially used as a resource.

Manager of resource recovery and education Brooke Pearce said ideally waste is put back into the economy.

“In an ideal world a circular economy… we take waste that is created by the community to a facility or technology that creates that waste into another material that can be utilised in projects or put back into the economy to create jobs etc,” she said.

A survey has been launched by the City to see how much people know about the circular economy.

“We’re reaching out to local business but also the community to find out what the current understanding is on what circular economy is and what it means for them,” Ms Pearce said.

“Then what we’ll do from the results will be create a targeted campaign to spend time with business and the community to educate and inform.”

As part of the transition, the municipality has received input from businesses keen to develop circular economy solutions.

“We received 40 submissions for opportunities from companies and consortia who would like to take our materials and utilise them in another form other than landfill,” Ms Pearce said.

“That might look like soft plastics taken out of the waste stream and turned into recycled furniture, for example.”

“At the end of April, we’re about to go to our second phase which is the closed tender process and those companies will be submitting their final technology solutions to us.”

The circular economy project aims to reduce landfill significantly as the council also begins roll out a zero-waste policy which will benefit both the environment and the economy.

“Everything that we landfill we have a State Government tax, which is 60 per cent in one year, that’s a significant cost to the community,” Ms Pearce said

“If we can create a circular economy where waste can have a re-use then that’s a better outcome for our community environmentally moving forward.”

The survey is active until Friday, 30 April and can be found at surveymonkey.com/r/CoGB_Circular_Economy