Waste reduction plan awarded

THE City of Greater Bendigo has been recognised as an industry leader at the Premier’s Sustainability Awards for a two-year long project seeking to divert the amount of waste going into landfill.

Announced at a ceremony in Melbourne last week alongside 12 other winners, the Sustainability Victoria awards champion the work of community groups and organisations for their work in developing circular economies where wase is repurposed into new products.

Known as the Circular Greater Bendigo program, the City has focused on solutions to the amount of food organics and garden waste ending up in landfill, as well general rubbish and plastics.

The municipality was recognised in the Circular Economy Innovation category.

Part of that process has been setting up the Western Composting Technology which will become a food organics and garden organics processing and recirculation facility.

The privately-owned local composting facility is to be built on municipal-owned land next to the Bendigo Livestock Exchange in Huntly and is forecast to process up to 30,000 tonnes of waste each year and reduce emissions by 16.3 per cent.

A municipal spokesperson said a plan to build a different small-scale plant would convert up to 30,000 tonnes of general waste into energy through pyrolysis and gasification is “ongoing”.

Another project that would see the region’s soft plastics used as a road-based additive and recycled into plastic pellets by a Melbourne-based manufacturer is also in the works.

Meanwhole, a third previously announced project that would have seen a Bendigo-based manufacturing start-up create structural engineering products from plastics in co-mingled recycling bins has fallen over.

Initially touted as capable of achieving upwards of 40 per cent reduction in emissions compared with existing recycling routes for the plastic, a council spokesperson said the company pulled out due to “not having the personnel resources to proceed with their proposal.”

Municipal director of presentation and assets Brian Westley said the Premier’s award was a vote of confidence for waste reduction efforts, which are becoming increasingly important given the Eaglehawk landfill is nearing capacity.

“The City has been working for some time now to identify, develop and implement a number of circular economy and resource management solutions,” he said.

“It also reduces negative environmental impacts and provides new economic development.”