Corporate Waste Solutions: Issue 2

CORPORATE WASTE SOLUTIONS

RESPONSIBLE PROSPERITY

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3Rs for a new generation Patagonia’s Rick Ridgeway driving a new strategy for the clothing industry ANGEL OR DEMON? The future of plastics FOOD FOR THOUGHT Is food waste the ultimate ‘affluenza’?

CROSSING THE DIVIDE Is the EU really the world leader in resource efficiency?

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PUTTING IT TO BED Will we see national product stewardship for mattresses?

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Contents Issue 2

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OPENING FEATURE

RESOURCE EFFICIENCY

CASE STUDY

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Angel or demon?

Food for thought

When it comes to recycling, reusing and resource efficiency, plastic gets a bad (w)rap, but is it deserved?

The movement to minimise avoidable food waste and create further value down the line is gathering momentum.

Putting mattress recycling to bed

CONTENT PARTNER

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The need to manage nutrients

Paddock to plate to paddock

As populations surge, cities grow larger and demands on food production spiral, what of the waste streams generated?

Where people see waste, Closed Loop’s Rob Pascoe sees wasted resources.

18 Sustainable innovation REMONDIS looks at why sustainable innovation is vital for Australia’s waste management industry.

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Will technology advances finally solve the issues dogging mattress recycling?

PROPERTY

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Crossing the divide

Just how green is my building?

Long held out as the world leader in resource efficiency, the European Union is, in reality, a work in progress.

Commercial property sector initiatives,

to measure and compare recycling and waste management, could see the data incorporated into existing building disclosure and green rating schemes.

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OPINION

PROFILE

THE DEBATE

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Recycling – the USB plug for a circular economy

Three Rs for a new generation

What’s the future for the plastic bag?

The time is nigh for standardisation in recycling protocols.

Lauded as one of the world’s great adventurers, Rick Ridgeway has a new mission – to drive sustainable change throughout the clothing industry.

Planet Ark’s Brad Gray and Grant Musgrove of the Australian Council on Recycling go head-to-head.

37 The hidden issue There’s much corporate Australia can do to battle the plight of hunger on our streets and reduce food waste.

45 The plastic soup Marine debris is a modern litter issue.

61 The pillars of sustainable procurement

CWS REGULARS PRODUCT STEWARDSHIP

38 Not ‘tyred’ of managing end-of-life It took a long time to get there, but tyres have joined a host of products and initiatives in the Australian market managing product stewardship better.

8 Editor’s comment

16 Product showcase

65 Government update

66 Events

How do we get sustainable procurement on the agenda in Australia?

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Publisher Joanne Davies

Editorial

Editorial Managing Editor Ben Creagh ben.creagh @ niche.com.au Editor Michelle Dunner michelle.dunner @ niche.com.au Subeditor Madeleine Swain Advertising

Recovering the unrecoverable

G

rowing up in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, perhaps once or twice a year we headed out for what was a typical family excursion in those times – to the Coburg tip.

It exasperated my mother; we’d always come back with more ‘rubbish’ than we took. Dolls without heads, bicycle frames my brother swore he’d restore and never did, dilapidated furniture.

On any given visit, I suppose we could have claimed a ‘net reduction’ in our family’s contribution to landfi ll, although the reality was we didn’t really give a second thought to what we threw away. But the memory that stays with me from that era is seeing a pile of fetid mattresses. Even in an acutely smelly environment, they had their own unique aroma. It was hard to see how such things could become recoverable or recyclable.

In this issue of CWS, we present a case study of a Melbourne-based organisation tackling mattress deconstruction. Nick Harford tells us that technology is solving a difficult issue for local governments and consumers in an area plagued by poor environmental and safety outcomes.

There is no national or state-supported product stewardship regime for mattresses. It’s yet another example of the growing list of items for which end-of-life strategies still need to be worked through. John Gertsakis and Rose Read continue their series on product stewardship, with part two focusing on tyres, batteries and lights containing mercury.

We have two major features this issue – plastic and food waste. Easily demonised for its waste impacts, particularly in the marine environment, plastic has a major role to play in reducing waste in other areas, particularly in food but more innovation, technology and solutions need to be found to maximise the benefits and minimise the problems.

National advertising manager Lachlan Oakley lachlan.oakley @ niche.com.au (03) 9948 4952 Production Art director Keely Atkins Production manager Jamuna Raj jamuna.raj@niche.com.au Digital prepress Monique Blair Publishing Chairman Nicholas Dower Managing director Paul Lidgerwood Commercial director Joanne Davies Content director Chris Rennie Financial controller Sonia Jurista Subscriptions Subscription enquiries Call 1800 804 160 or email subscriptions@niche.com.au Printing Graphic Impressions CWS online — CWSmagazine.com.au — twitter.com/CWSmagazine_au — facebook.com/facilitymanagementmagazine — linkedin.com/Facility Management magazine CWS is a publication of HH & M Media Pty Ltd, a member of the Niche Group.

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PRIVACY POLICY

Michelle Dunner Editor

CONTENT PARTNER CONTRIBUTION A Corporate Waste Solutions Content Partner is an organisation with which we’ve entered into a partnership to collaborate on content for the magazine. In this issue, the thought leader is: REMONDIS AUSTRALIA’S GUNTHER NEUMANN Gunther Neumann is head of technical department at REMONDIS Australia. He graduated as a waste and water engineer and joined REMONDIS in Germany in 2007. He moved to Australia in 2012 to join REMONDIS Australia.

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This issue of CWS magazine may contain offers, competitions, surveys, subscription offers and premiums that, if you choose to participate, require you to provide information about yourself. If you provide information about yourself to HH & M Media (the publishers of CWS magazine), HH & M Media and Niche Group will use the information to provide you with the products or services you have requested (such as subscriptions). We may also provide this information to contractors who provide the products and services on our behalf (such as mail houses and suppliers of subscriber premiums and promotional prizes). We do not sell your information to third parties under any circumstances, however the suppliers of some of these products and services may retain the information we provide for future activities of their own, including direct marketing.

Niche Group will also retain your information and use it to inform you of other Niche Group promotions and publications from time to time.

If you would like to know what information Niche Group holds about you, please contact The Privacy Officer, Niche Group Pty Ltd,.

CWS ISSN 1320-3975 Advertisers and contributors of editorial to CWS Magazine acknowledge they are aware of the provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 and the Trade Practices Act 1974 in relation to false and misleading advertising or statements and other unfair practices and of the penalties for breach of provisions of those acts. The publisher accepts no responsibility for such breaches. CWS Magazine is published bi-monthly. Opinions expressed by contributors are their own and not necessarily endorsed by the publisher. © 2016 HH & M Media Pty Ltd

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SANDY RODGER says the time is nigh for standardisation in recycling protocols.

Opinion

Recycling – the USB plug for a circular economy

D

oes my local town have its own unique mains electricity plugs?

Does a local council choose to drive on the right? Does each train company set its wheels to its own chosen distance between the rails, optimised for its own rail routes? No. Even in our chaotic and innovative world, we have standards, where being the same as the next town, or all the towns, is more useful than being ‘better’. Even the super-innovative world of IT has standards. I have lots of cables, which at one end are all different and, at the other end, all the same – the USB plug.

It’s time we took the same approach to recycling – I mean specifically the separation of materials that we expect of citizens, and how these are collected. There are three main reasons for this.

COMPLIANCE Citizens don’t struggle with standards; in fact, they are a relief, one less thing to think about, especially for mundane things.

Where recycling is not standardised, we create a whole series of get-out clauses – ‘I didn’t understand’, ‘I didn’t believe it really gets recycled’, ‘I didn’t have time to check the label’, ‘I didn’t recognise the bins’ – all adding up to simply ‘I didn’t’.

According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s recent ‘New Plastics Economy’ report, globally only 14 percent of plastic packaging is collected for recycling. You don’t hear 86 percent of people say, ‘I didn’t drive on the correct side of the road.’

DESIGN Products are not designed for recycling. Not really. They carry various statements about their recyclability, which basically mean ‘this product could theoretically be recycled,

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Where recycling is not standardised, we create a whole series of get-out clauses – ‘I didn’t understand’, ‘I didn’t believe it really gets recycled’, ‘I didn’t have time to check the label’, ‘I didn’t recognise the bins’ – all adding up to simply ‘I didn’t’.

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somewhere’. The somewhere may actually be somewhere else, perhaps on the other side of the world, perhaps in a laboratory. In most places the product is sold, the design may make it near impossible to recycle. But manufacturers also have an impossible task – trying to design recyclable products when every municipality does recycling differently.

Standardised recycling systems would give designers and manufacturers a clear target, leading to compatibility in design, labelling and choice of materials.

INVESTMENT Separating different parts of the waste stream is hard, but not impossible. Almost all products start with a heterogeneous raw material from a mine or a field and, over many years, engineers have developed technologies for refining and purifying the materials we use to make things. The waste steam is just another source, a growing one at a time when virgin material sources are being depleted.

The waste and recycling industry is not new, but as an integral part of manufacturing industry, producing highquality products, it is on new ground, struggling to develop the skills and business y seem helpful p models it needs. It may

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if some citizens in some places can be persuaded to segregate some materials, but this misses the point. If we’re really to stem the tide of waste, we need all the citizens in all the places to feed back all the materials.

If we ask too much in terms of separation that will never happen.

So a standard – a very simple standard – becomes the basis for the citizen to comply effortlessly, leaving the professionals in the waste and recycling industry to invest in doing the whole of their job.

It is nowhere near enough just to standardise between adjacent municipalities, admirable though that may be in the places it is starting to happen.

Yes, that may allow a larger, more efficient, recycling facility to be built, but it doesn’t begin to address the three points above.

Citizens move around more widely than that, and the scale of design, manufacturing and investment is far greater than city size. This is truly the place for international standards.

Ah yes, but citizens are different in my town. They have different needs, a different culture. Really? When I worked for Unilever we researched consumer behaviour around washing clothes – a similarly mundane domestic task. Every country manager in Unilever’s global empire would tell you that ‘th ‘their’ consumer was different. But the researc research showed in fact there were global archety archetypes of behaviour, which appeared everyw everywhere, but in slightly different combin combinations.

Wha What if the same applied to recycling – what w would the archetypes be? Suppose apartm apartment dwellers in Copenhagen and in São Paulo P actually have the same challen challenges in terms of recycling – limited space ffor bins, no direct street access etc.

Likewis Likewise, the house dwellers, and the slum dweller dwellers.

The proportions of the three will differ – no slu slums in Copenhagen for a start – making it easy to say that the two cities are diffe erent. But in fact a standardised approa approach to each kind of dwelling could work in both cities – and everywhere else. An And it’s highly debatable whether recyclin recycling behaviour is in any deep sense ‘cultura ‘cultural’ – I suspect the so-called culture is main mainly people being accustomed to what they th currently have. So the idea that municip municipalities are all different seems to me t be la to lazy thinking – mainly a way of saying ‘we don don’t want to face change from what we are cu ur currently doing’.

IIsn’t Is n’t standardisation a barrier to iinnovation in nnovat and design? If innovation is

It’s time the world of recycling learned which end of the cable it is.

If we want a circular economy, recycling is the USB plug. meant to be a complete free-for-all, design without consequences, then perhaps, but since when was that the case? Designers always have to work within parameters of cost and regulation. Design in a circular economy is about designing the system, not just the product, and the economics and regulation will increasingly dictate that the system should allow the materials, and even better the intact product and its components, to be reused. In that world some standardisation of recycling will greatly help the designer.

Getting this done will be hard. The points above are a provocation, but even with overwhelming evidence on the principle of standardisation, the question will be: which standard? My vote would be for the simplest possible, because high compliance with a simple system should win over partial compliance with a complex system.

We should even question whether or not citizens need to segregate their waste at all! But who decides? The greatest global leverage over product and infrastructure design comes from international companies in different sectors, and from major cities.

If the CEOs of Dow, Unilever and Veolia all signed up to this, with some major city mayors, that would be a start. The ‘New Plastics Economy’ report has these players on board, and proposes a dialogue mechanism that establishes a new ‘global plastics protocol’. I believe this needs to include the standardisation of recycling.

If it doesn’t, I fear the overall task of eliminating plastic waste will dissolve into impossible complexity. Unlike the plastic floating in the ocean, which won’t dissolve for hundreds of years.

It’s time the world of recycling learns which end of the cable it is. If we want a circular economy, recycling is the USB plug. ■

Sandy Rodger is an engineer and business leader based in the UK who works with organisations on their transition to the circular economy.

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"Indeed, by 2050, there will be more plastics (by weight) than fish in the ocean,"

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“Monitoring, reporting and benchmarking tools for waste management in the property sector, have a huge potential to encourage better waste management practices and increase resource recovery rates throughout the sector.”

– Jennifer Hughes, Baker and McKenzie

“Look at the footprint of a jacket over its lifetime. The footprint reduces when the jacket is used for five, 10, 15 or even more than 20 years.

We didn’t want jackets to be worn out after a year and end up in landfill.”

“Last year our partners provided 33 million kilograms of food and groceries with a retail value of over $200 million.”

– Rick Ridgeway, Patagonia

– Sandy Rodger, UK-based engineer and business leader

“We need to ensure procurement professionals understand the ethics and embrace international obligations when it comes to selecting and managing suppliers.”

"The term 'biodegradable' is used too generically; the most sustainble types are compostable plastics made from a renewable crop such as sugar or potatoes using environmentally responsible processes."

– Jeni Christensen, procurement professional

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– Sarah Pennell, Foodbank Australia

“Where recycling is not standardised, we create a whole series of get-out clauses – ‘I didn’t understand’, ‘I didn’t believe it really gets recycled’, ‘I didn’t have time to check the label’, ‘I didn’t recognise the bins’ – all adding up to simply ‘I didn’t’.”

– Helen Lewis

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“Breaking our dependence on single-use plastic bags will take effort. Stakeholders need to consider: whether to implement a total or partial ban or a levy, which bags and which retailers are covered and which aren’t, and how the regulations will be enforced.”

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– Brad Grey, Planet Ark

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“A recent CSIRO study of Australian beaches found that threequarters of the litter found on them was plastic.”

“The accuracy and availability of comparable and comprehensive indicators remains a political bottleneck for introducing a material productivity target.”

– Florian Flachenecker, leading EU academic

“There has been a shift in the potential role of the wastewater industry, which is now aware it could produce valuable resources.”

– Dr Tim Muster, CSIRO

“If a scheme is to work and recover significant volumes of mattresses for recycling, then there must be strong standards and specifications that ensure participants are achieving good environmental and social results.”

– Michael Warren, TIC Mattress Recycling

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“Campaigns cannot singlehandedly tackle the issue of food waste by food retailers. What is needed is a concerted effort that tackles food waste in store as well as up- and downstream.”

– Jenni Downes, Institute of Sustainable Futures, UTS

“More examples of innovative product and service design will emerge that clearly demonstrate how we dematerialise and focus on functional output rather than manufactured throughput.”

– John Gertsakis and Rose Read, product stewardship experts

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Innovation

Applications big and small, domestic and industrial, there’s a slew of products aimed at resolving major issues in responsible prosperity.

Product showcase Australian company ups the ante on recyclable battery storage Brisbane-based Redflow has launched ZCell, a non-lithium recyclable battery to power Australian homes.

ZCell is a high-capacity battery that can store 10 kilowatts per hour (kWh) of electricity – about enough power to run an average home for up to two days. A zinc-bromide battery, it is better suited for residential applications, the company claims. The battery allows people to ‘time shift’ solar power from day to night, store off-peak power for peak demand periods and support off-grid systems.

Redflow executive chairman Simon Hackett says ZCell is a breakthrough system.

“ZCell breaks many of the rules that apply to legacy batteries, making it ideal for the home market,” he says.

Simon Hackett, executive chairman of Redflow, launching the ZCell recyclable home energy battery.

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“ZCell lets you discharge 100 percent of its total stored energy every day, whereas other battery types can require a significant amount of their underlying storage capacity to be locked out to prevent battery damage and to extend battery life. ZCell is a unique flow battery that loves to be fully charged and discharged daily.

“ZCell is warranted to deliver its full 10 kWh of stored energy each day for as long as 10 years. During that period, lead acid and lithium batteries can lose a significant portion of their storage capacity.

“Importantly, ZCell enables you to reduce your carbon footprint and reliance on fossil fuel-generated electricity by storing energy harvested from your solar panels. ZCell is primarily made of plastic, aluminium and steel – elements that are easily recycled, while its fluid electrolyte can be reused or repurposed.”

The technology has been developed to counter moves by global giants Tesla and Panasonic and also to address the issue of depleted home solar batteries being discarded. Redflow has only recently targeted domestic applications for its products, after Tesla launched the Powerwall product.

Residential installations are scheduled to begin around the middle of this year.

The Australian Battery Recycling Initiative says around 8000 tonnes of lithium-ion batteries are thrown away each year and the growing use of solar for homes is likely to see that waste stream rise substantially over the next 20 years.

Citing research from IHS Technology in the US, Redflow says Australia’s energy storage market will grow from fewer than 500 battery installations last year to more than 5000 systems this year.

More details are available at www.zcell.com and there are plans to make the product available internationally.

The smart bin on-site in Royston Street, Darlinghurst.

City of Sydney deploys SmartBin technology The City of Sydney is tackling waste, clutter, illegal dumping and safety hazards head on by deploying an IoT (Internet of Things)based smart technology.

The council, together with SmartBin, has rolled out a smart monitoring system for the Royston Street underground waste storage project in Darlinghurst, on the city’s eastern fringe. In August 2014, an underground bin that residents could access through a PIN system replaced dozens of 240-litre bins.

However, the council found the 1100-litre steel bins were filling in an unpredictable manner with residents often faced by overfilled chutes and no room for their waste or recycling. The council decided to use SmartBin sensors that allow the council and its waste contractors to remotely monitor the fill levels. The sensors run on a live IoT platform and can send email or text alerts if bins reach a preconfigured threshold.

Royston Street is the first such example of underground bin technology in Australia,

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but the sensors are used extensively in similar applications around the country by both public and private waste companies, and also in Europe.

“The Royston Street project is a good example of what’s achievable with innovative waste management solutions in small spaces,” City of Sydney zero waste coordinator, Hal Dobbins says.

More information is available at www.smartbin.com

New linings to tackle ageing water treatment infrastructure Corrosion at wastewater treatment plants and subsequent leakage has been tackled

by Gold Coast-based company Rhino Linings Australasia.

The company says degradation of infrastructure costs industry over $1 billion each year, with pipelines, storage tanks, clarifier ponds and sewage channels most affected, especially submerged areas.

Coatings are being developed to refurbish the infrastructure assets that are strong, flexible and resistant to chemical attack.

It has developed Polyurea, a sprayapplied coating, first used in the early 1990s, but now refined. The Rhino Linings Pure Polyurea comes as a two-part solution that is mixed under high temperature and pressure (3000 psi at 65 degrees Celsius) in a specially designed spray apparatus.

When applied, the excellent chemical cross-linking produces a dense but flexible surface. The high density makes the coating almost impervious to abrasion, water and chemicals.

“Many people do not know that spray applied Pure Polyureas are a very good method of protecting most structures,” says

Polyurea pure being applied at a sewage plant.

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Dennis Baker, special projects engineer. “We need to educate the engineering marketplace about the benefits and cost-effectiveness of this versatile and adaptable material.”

More information is available from www.rhinolinings.com.au

Detecting urban contaminants Screening for toxic metals has become a key part of land remediation and other environmental safeguards. Macquarie University has produced a series of maps that plot concentrations of metal pollutants across major cities and towns, including Sydney, Newcastle, Broken Hill, Mount Isa, Port Pirie and Townsville. The major contaminant of most concern in Sydney, for example, is lead.

The Macquarie team used X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) analysis for measuring levels of contaminant metals. Simple screening for toxic metals is performed by placing an analyser – such as the Delta Premium from Olympus – directly onto soil or dust. The analyser provides detection of metals for site characterisation, contamination tracking, remediation monitoring and property evaluations.

Andrew Saliba, regional sales specialist with Olympus, says the latest portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) analysers, such as the Delta Premium, have been developed specifically for complete environmental investigations of metal contaminants in a wide range of industrial and domestic materials. The high-power, high-performance, incredibly rugged Delta allows in situ analysis in a wide range of harsh environments, from remote mining and exploration sites to backyards in major urban centres.

The latest model Delta unit offers increased speed and improved sensitivity. It also

Using the latest model Olympus Delta unit to detect soil contaminants.

lowers the limit of detection (LOD) for challenging elements such as cadmium, barium, lead, mercury and tin.

In conjunction with the contamination mapping, Macquarie researchers also run the community orientated VegeSafe program. This is the largest study of its kind in the country and has provided information about metal contamination levels to more than 500 households across Sydney, and over 1000 households across Australia.

VegeSafe seeks to inform people about metals and metalloids in their garden soils and provides a free sampling program for domestic and community garden soils.

The Macquarie team is headed by Professor Mark Taylor, an academic and former Commissioner of the NSW Land and Environment Court. “The VegeSafe motto is ‘Carry on Gardening’,” he says, “because this is exactly what we want people to do knowing that their soils are metal free as is the produce from their gardens.”

In contaminated suburbs where vegetables will be grown, the Macquarie team recommends growing produce in above ground vegetable plots, using fresh clean topsoil. “Typically, undisturbed soil in urban areas accumulates contaminants over long periods of time and should be avoided when growing home produce,” says Marek Rouillon, a PhD researcher on Taylor’s team.

“Our recommendations are determined by different scenarios and contaminant concentrations,” adds Rouillon. “VegeSafe provides specific recommendations and advice to a gardener for their particular situation.”

Further information on the Delta unit is available at www.olympus-ims.com, while more details on VegeSafe can be found here: research.science.mq.edu.au/vegesafe.

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Content partner: REMONDIS

Driving the future of waste management with sustainable innovation GUNTHER NEUMANN explains why sustainable innovation must be considered if Australia’s waste management industry is going to continue to positively impact the environment.

S

ustainable innovation is vital to the future of the waste management industry in Australia and the environment.

With a stable economy supported by strong population growth, Australia remains an ideal place to capitalise on opportunities to invest in waste treatment. The challenge is how Australia identifies and makes the most of these opportunities to reflect our environmental goals.

Australia has always had a can-do attitude in its approach to delivering waste management innovation. When REMONDIS fi rst arrived in Australia from Germany in the 1980s it was obvious that the company had set up business in a country with a lot of unique activity in waste treatment.

For example, REMONDIS fi rst discovered the side-loading truck in Australia at a time when waste management companies in Europe were commonly all using rear loaders. After shipping one of the trucks to Germany, it was found that in many cases the vehicle was more efficient than the rear loaders being operated at the time.

REMONDIS soon became one the fi rst companies in Europe to widely use the

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side-loading truck, and before long our major competitors were also including the vehicles in their fleets.

Today, Australia remains in a unique waste management position globally, due to its geographical position, economic stability and population growth.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia generates almost 48 million tonnes of waste each year – or about 2.1 tonnes per person. The ABS says that 40 percent of this waste is sent to landfi ll.

As Australia’s population increases so will these figures. And while landfi ll is here to stay in Australia for the foreseeable future, there is a greater focus on diverting waste to either recycling or composting.

Diversion of waste from landfi ll to recycling or composting is a trend that isn’t going away – both options represent areas where sustainable innovation will be important in the years ahead.

The benefits of recycling are welldocumented. Recycling conserves natural resources, saves a large amount of water and energy in the production process, cuts greenhouse gases, extends landfi ll life, protects land and saves the lives of marine animals.

Recycling – or the circular flow economy – has been a focal point of the

waste management agenda in Europe for many years. In Australia, this agenda is emerging more rapidly than ever and innovation has a role to play in its future.

Through innovative technologies and processing systems, recycling not only diverts waste from landfi ll, but can also lower general operating costs.

Wollongong City Council, which has partnered with REMONDIS to manage the local government’s waste for the past 20 years, is an authority that has focused on sustainable innovation as part of its recycling and waste collection services.

With REMONDIS, the council partnered for recycling, recovery, reuse and the disposal of waste, helping residents reduce the amount of waste sent to landfi ll by recycling or reusing unwanted goods and materials.

Meanwhile, awareness of how organic materials can be sustainably managed is also building in Australia, with composting offering a broad range of opportunities from a sustainability perspective.

Through various partnerships REMONDIS currently processes around 75,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of food and green organics in New South Wales and Queensland, recovers around 200,000 tpa of biosolids from over two million people around Australia and collects green organics from nearly one million Australians.

Innovation has been a key element of REMONDIS’ relationship with Port Macquarie-Hastings Council in NSW – together we partnered to establish Australia’s fi rst tunnel organic resource recovery facility (ORRF).

Since the facility was unveiled in 2001, the specialised tunnel waste technology has become standard in other ORRFs around the country. At the ORRF organic

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Content partner commercial fi rm or industrial company is then critical prior to a new processing facility being implemented.

Once these requirements have been satisfied, the technology that guides innovation in the facility must demonstrate it has been proven in the waste industry. It is about taking advantage of proven technology and then adding an innovative touch, which in Australia’s case often means adapting foreign equipment to the local environment.

REMONDIS IN AUSTRALIA

A strong partnership with a local government, commercial firm or industrial company is then critical prior to a new processing facility being implemented. material is shredded and processed in climate-controlled tunnels for a set period to produce nutrient-rich compost.

As the operator, REMONDIS sells the compost to the agriculture sector, to landscape suppliers and directly to residents. Innovation has continued at the ORRF over the years, with it recently becoming one of the first to implement a solar power system, which in a country like Australia is a logical green energy initiative.

The solar power system, which produces an estimated 67,500 kilowatts per hour annually, is helping to reduce operating costs by as much as $17,000 a year and is reducing carbon emissions by more than 60 tpa.

In 2014, Port Macquarie-Hastings Council was successful in selling carbon credits gained through the Australian Government’s Carbon Farming Initiative, which relates to the operation of the facility and diversion of organic material from landfi ll.

Like Port Macquarie-Hastings Council, local governments, as well as commercial

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and industrial companies, can pursue partnerships with waste management companies to have organic materials processed into compost-based products, such as mulches, garden soils and potting mixes.

New products are also being continually researched and developed for other environmental applications, including erosion control and stormwater treatment. There are a range of organic materials that make up these products – from lawn clippings and leaves to wood and food wastes.

Management of organic materials will continue to be an innovation challenge and opportunity for waste management companies identifying uses for these valuable resources. Diverting more waste from landfi ll is the end goal, but a number of requirements should be considered before commitment to new innovation is made.

Most importantly, suitable volumes of waste are required to ensure long-term sustainability for the facility. A strong partnership with a local government,

For almost 35 years, sustainable innovation has been at the heart of REMONDIS’ operations in Australia – ever since our fi rst operation was set up in Penrith, New South Wales.

Since then, operations have been established in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and throughout NSW. REMONDIS now has around 1000 employees, a fleet of 530 trucks and 34 business sites in cities and regional areas across the country.

REMONDIS Australia is part of the REMONDIS Group, which was founded in Germany in 1934 and is one of the world’s largest environmental management organisations, operating in 34 countries.

While many of our international markets have suffered fi nancial stress during the past decade, Australia has largely maintained a strong economy.

At the same time many Australian government authorities have established municipal waste reduction targets and are using landfi ll taxes to drive compliance.

With this progress a lot of potential for investment in new waste management methods and technologies remains for Australia in order to make the industry more productive, efficient and environmentally friendly.

There will also be opportunities to export Australian expertise internationally, just as with the sideloading truck almost 35 years ago. To advance these opportunities, it will not only help the environment but benefit the business community as well.

Gunther Neumann is head of technical department at REMONDIS Australia. He graduated as a waste and water engineer and joined REMONDIS in Germany in 2007. He moved to Australia in 2012 to join REMONDIS Australia.

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Feature

ANGEL OR DEMON? When it comes to recycling, reusing and resource efficiency, plastic gets a bad (w)rap, but is it deserved? MICHELLE DUNNER reports

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ustralia consumes around 1.3 million tonnes of plastics a year. The good news is that’s around 50 kilograms for every citizen, compared to around 70 kilograms in Europe and 80 in the US. The bad news is that too much of it ends up in the waste stream – in Australia, around 600,000 tonnes of plastic material each year ends up as landfill or litter.

It’s easy to demonise plastic. There are well-founded concerns about plastic’s impact on the marine environment, while any windy day it’s common to see a plastic bag wafting through the air. As well, discarded plastic containers from food or beverages are all too frequently spotted by the side of the road or on the beach.

But Ed Kosior, owner of UK-based sustainable polymers consultancy Nextek, says plastic isn’t bad. In too many respects, it’s just designed that way.

“Let’s break down the usage; for every person who, say, uses 70 kilograms of plastics in any given year, about half of that goes to short-lived items like packaging. The other half is used in building products, automotive, electronics. It has a lifetime of anywhere between 10 and 100 years.

“Plastics are, generally, highly efficient materials and an important part of society; the problems start with lowcost materials in short-term applications where we haven’t mapped out the product’s lifetime.”

Plastics permeate almost every aspect of our lives.

In terms of waste though, Kosior believes their positive role should also be recognised. “More impacts on the

environment come from wasting food. While plastic, in many quarters, is seen as an evil thing, it’s highly efficient in reducing food waste.

“But what’s missing is the strategy for dealing with plastics at end-of-life. China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam – they’re still struggling to develop waste streams for their urban populations. Many people there still live in informal housing.

"They may have relatively low per capita consumption, but what they do use of plastics goes straight into rivers and seas.

“Waste has been an issue in the plastics world for a long time, but it should be recognised that it’s a big part of the efficient world as well – sewerage, gas and water distribution, extending food life cycles.”

LOW-COST RECOVERY Collecting plastics to create feedstock for recovery or recycling has issues with efficiency, cost and fragmentation, according to Kosior. He says targets for recycling are also historically ‘soft’.

“One of the conditions when PET (polyethylene terephthalate) was introduced was to develop a collection system; this turned into multi-material collection and became a recycling stream that was efficient for lots of items. We all started to pick up beverage containers.

“But bottles only represent a third of our packaging stream; we didn’t pick up film or other forms of plastic.

Our infrastructure is slowly shifting to collect other materials – pots, tubs, trays – and there have been some

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Feature

important innovations that sped up the ability to process materials more effectively in response to the amount being generated.

“And every country is saying ‘do something about it’ – they want more collection, more recycling, to hit better targets. Essentially in Australia I think we’re doing the best we can in a bad system – we need an improved collection system and a strategy for the whole sector.”

Kosior says the notion of producer responsibility hasn’t been taken to heart in Australia, compared to other countries.

“If you increase the cost of landfill, you immediately create opportunities for recycling. Let’s say the charge is $20 a tonne to go to landfill, but if it’s $120 a tonne, businesses may think twice and even offer the material free of charge. Suddenly another business gets a resource on a continuous basis and the ability to establish an enterprise.

“You see the dichotomy of New South Wales charging $120 a tonne and Queensland next to nothing. There’s a lot of waste, including plastics, crossing the border.

Australia doesn’t have a national waste strategy. There are no defined targets that are meaningful or aggressive that give businesses looking for feedstock the confidence they’ll be able to obtain more material, or for investors that the sector will grow.

“Go back 12 to 15 years ago, we had a much better situation, led by NSW and Victoria, but a lot of things have softened. We need to re-energise this through simple economic instruments.”

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A global perspective India’s population of 1.1 billion (and growing) generates 2.5 million tonnes of plastic per year – almost double that generated in Australia from a relatively tiny population. This, however, is subject to change. Ed Kosior says the plastic industry is growing at the rate of population – around two to three percent a year.

“Like China, India is on a path to urbanisation,” Kosior says. “People are moving from rural locations to mega cities; the income of rural workers will double in the next three years. As they move to towns, working in factories, they’ll start purchasing prepared foods. Countries like India lose up to 40 percent of harvested food through spoilage or wastage. Packaging will increase its shelf life.

“But as these countries get wealthier, need to feed more people in cities and use more packaging, they don’t have recovery streams. Basically the packaging went to compost, which was contaminated and ended up being burnt, contributing to air pollution.

The world’s three worst cities for air pollution are all in India. Good waste management is missing in these developing countries. Around 70 percent of the plastics found in the ocean come from Asia.

“But while Europe and the US collect lots of plastic, most recycling doesn’t happen there – the materials go to China and south-east Asia. After they’ve taken what they want, they don’t have a

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Feature waste system to deal with the residue. The informal waste system is the local river.

“Industry needs to pick up this issue, exporters of packaging materials to other destinations need to be sure whatever’s not used in recycling is responsibly disposed of or in waste to energy, not simply flushed to oceans. There is a looming crisis in that area.”

THE STATE OF THE INDUSTRY Kosior says the plastic industry in Australia has a number of gaps in responsible product stewardship and the supply chain that need to be addressed.

“The National Packaging Covenant was held up as a way of handling the end-of-life issues with plastics,” he says. “I would say Australian companies can comply with environmental issues here in a rather superficial way; they lodge a plan, they meet it, everyone’s happy. Industry says ‘let us deal with the environmental issues’ and it gets done in a way that I’d call comfortable. Targets are set that don’t overextend anyone. It’s a contrast to the UK and Europe.

“The UK had to catch up. In 2004 there was very little recycling of packaging – around four percent of bottles. Now, 70 percent of bottles are recycled.

They took a supply chain approach, working with the resin companies, the beverage manufacturers, the

“If you increase the cost of landfill, you immediately create opportunities for recycling. Let’s say the charge is $20 a tonne to go to landfill, but if it’s $120 a tonne, businesses may think twice and even offer the material free of charge. Suddenly another business gets a resource on a continuous basis and the ability to establish an enterprise.” – Ed Kosior councils, the retailers. They took the attitude that no negative materials should damage the product’s ability to be recycled.

“Suddenly people became prepared to invest in recycling initiatives; in 10 years the industry was transformed. The Packaging Covenant tried to do something similar, but hasn’t succeeded. Australia hasn’t taken the supply chain approach to heart; no one’s watching the process.

“In the UK, every package made carries with it a contribution from the brand owner for the recycling of that packaging. Recyclers are paid a credit out of that pool of funds.”

ARE BIOPLASTICS THE ANSWER? A rapidly growing area, bioplastics have attracted a lot of interest, but Kosior says there’s still much to be worked out.

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“There’s a dilemma: despite the public perception, many bioplastics don’t degrade. They’re durable and that doesn’t resolve the problem of end-oflife. Other issues include those bioplastics that do degrade are degrading in the wrong place at the wrong time. We need functional degradability.”

Product stewardship consultant Helen Lewis contends that just because bioplastics are made from agricultural resources rather than being petroleum-based, it doesn’t mean they’re impact free. “The term ‘biodegradable’ is used too generically; the most sustainable types are compostable plastics made from a renewable crop such as sugar or potatoes using environmentally responsible processes,” she says.

“But compostable plastics are only good if they end up in compost. We don’t have the systems everywhere to collect those materials. Near where I live, Shellharbour Council is starting to collect food waste along with green waste, but we need access to widespread organic collections. A bioplastic ending up in landfill is not a good result.

“The recovery infrastructure is still in its infancy here. Gradually, we’ll see separate kerbside collection of organics for composting, or the development of alternative waste facilities where residual household waste can be processed to recover energy and organic material.

“We need to distinguish between two systems.

‘Technical’ materials such as glass, metals and most plastics should be recovered through recycling, while ‘organic’ materials such as bioplastics and food waste need to be recovered through composting. We just need to work out how to deal with the materials better.”

Lewis believes Australian business is generally not seeing renewable plastics as an opportunity; rather, its approach to the material is still being driven by regulatory and environmental controls.

“There is some innovation; companies like (Melbourne-based) Plantic Technologies are working to find solutions that provide enhanced performance in a cost-effective way,” she says.

“They’ve introduced new resins that blend bioplastics with conventional polymers to meet specific requirements, but it’s a transition.

“Most companies don’t want to pay a premium for something more environmentally sustainable, unless that’s how they’re positioning themselves in the market. Consumers are also resistant to paying more. But there’s no doubt it represents a business opportunity. There’s a huge amount of R&D around the world, looking at creating biopolymers from waste materials and other more sustainable sources.

“But here, unless [renewable plastics] are part of the regulatory environment, things won’t happen quickly. While the EU is addressing plastics from a total life cycle point of view, including recycling and marine litter, Australia hasn’t quite picked up on that agenda.”

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Feature

Creating value – the case for rethinking plastic packaging Plastics were high on the agenda at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland earlier this year. The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the Future of Plastics was authored by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, using analysis from McKinsey and Company and looked at what may happen if circular economy principles were applied to plastic packaging flows on a global basis.

The report found plastic production has surged – 15 million tonnes in 1964, to 311 million tonnes in 2014 and is expected to double again within 20 years. Plastic packaging is likely to remain the largest application, accounting for 26 percent of the total volume of plastics used.

A staggering 95 percent of the material value of plastic packaging is lost to the global economy after a short, first use, representing up to US$120 billion a year.

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“More than 40 years after the launch of the first universal recycling symbol, only 14 percent of plastic packaging is collected for recycling,” the report says. “When additional value losses in sorting and reprocessing are factored in, only five percent of material value is retained for a subsequent use.

“Plastics that do get recycled are mostly recycled into lower-value applications that are not again recyclable after use. The recycling rate for plastics in general is even lower than for plastic packaging, and both are far below the global recycling rates for paper (58 percent) and iron and steel (70 to 90 percent).”

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has valued plastic packaging’s ‘negative externalities’ at around US$40 billion, saying at least eight million tonnes of plastics leak into the ocean. “Which is equivalent to dumping the contents of one garbage truck into the ocean every minute,” the report identifies. “If no action is taken, this is expected to increase to two per minute by 2030 and four per minute by 2050.”

Indeed, by 2050, there will be more plastics (by weight) than fish in the ocean.

So, where to from here? How can we develop a more effective recycling system and lessen the reliance on virgin materials (usually from petrochemical sources) to develop plastic products?

“Today’s plastics economy is highly fragmented,” the report says. “The lack of standards and coordination across the value chain has allowed a proliferation of materials, formats, labelling, collection schemes, and sorting and reprocessing systems, which collectively hamper the development of effective markets. Innovation is also fragmented.

“The development and introduction of new packaging materials and formats across global supply and distribution chains is happening far faster than, and is largely disconnected from, the development and deployment of corresponding after-use systems and infrastructure. At the same time, hundreds, if not thousands, of small-scale local initiatives are launched each year, focused on areas such as improving collection schemes and installing new sorting and reprocessing technologies.

“Other issues, such as the fragmented development and adoption of labelling standards, hinder public understanding and create confusion.

In overcoming these drawbacks, an opportunity beckons: using the plastics innovation engine to move the industry into a positive spiral of value capture, stronger economics and better environmental outcomes.”

The report’s overarching vision is that plastics never become waste. “Rather, they re-enter the economy as valuable technical or biological nutrients. The New Plastics Economy is underpinned

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Feature by and aligns with principles of the circular economy. Its ambition is to deliver better systemwide economic and environmental outcomes by creating an effective after-use plastics economy, drastically reducing the leakage of plastics into natural systems (in particular the ocean) and other negative externalities, and decoupling from fossil feedstocks.”

The authors of the report discovered that even under today’s conditions, with the technological advances currently in the market, it is possible to partially realise these ambitions.

“One recent study found, for example, that in Europe today 53 percent of plastic packaging could be recycled economically and environmentally effectively. While the exact figure can be debated and depends upon, among other things, the oil price, the message is clear: there are pockets of opportunities to be captured today – and even where not entirely feasible today, The New Plastics Economy offers an attractive target state for the global value chain and governments to collaboratively innovate towards.”

“The term ‘biodegradable’ is used too generically; the most sustainable types are compostable plastics made from a renewable crop such as sugar or potatoes using environmentally responsible processes.” – Helen Lewis CREATING THE AFTER-USE PLASTICS ECONOMY Crucial to any recycling opportunity is creating an after-use market for renewably-sourced feedstock.

The report recommends a number of key initiatives: ■ Radically increase the economics, quality and uptake of recycling. Establish a crossvalue chain dialogue mechanism and develop a Global Plastics Protocol to set direction on the redesign and convergence of materials, formats and after-use systems to substantially improve collection, sorting and reprocessing yields, quality and economics, while allowing for regional differences and continued innovation. Enable secondary markets for recycled materials through the introduction and scale-up of matchmaking mechanisms, industry commitments and/or policy interventions. Focus on key innovation opportunities that have the potential to scale up, such as investments in new or improved materials and reprocessing technologies. Explore the overall enabling role of policy.

■ Scale up the adoption of reusable packaging within business-to-business applications as

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a priority, but also in targeted business-toconsumer applications such as plastic bags.

■ Scale up the adoption of industrially compostable plastic packaging for targeted applications such as garbage bags for organic waste and food packaging for events, fast food enterprises, canteens and other closed systems, where there is low risk of mixing with the recycling stream and where the pairing of a compostable package with organic contents helps return nutrients in the contents to the soil.

Circular economy manager for Netherlands-based global science company DSM, Lukas Hoex says the company has been surprised by the speed with which the sharing economy has grown. He believes it has opened up numerous new business opportunities.

“Besides cautious use of resources in production, we now need to focus on keeping resources in the economy for as long as possible and at the highest possible value, simply because that will improve the bottom line. If we can add more value while at the same time reduce the environmental burden, I do not think that it would affect our performance.”

DSM is experimenting with bio-based plastics.

“We do not know yet which type of plastic will prevail in the future: biodegradable plastics (made from natural materials), biodurables (which are also derived from organic flows and that are not degradable, but are recyclable together with traditional plastics) or the current plastics made from petroleum,” Hoex says.

But whatever develops, the report presented to the WEF says a concerted global effort is required to be able to establish a ‘New Plastics Economy’. It recommends the establishment of an independent coordinating vehicle to drive the initiative in a collaborative way across industry, governments and non-governmental organisations.

“Consumer goods companies, plastic packaging producers and plastics manufacturers would play a critical role, because they determine what products and materials are put on the market,” the report states. “Cities control the after-use infrastructure in many places and are often hubs for innovation. Businesses involved in collection, sorting and reprocessing are an equally critical part of the puzzle.

“Policy-makers can play an important role in enabling the transition by realigning incentives, facilitating secondary markets, defining standards and stimulating innovation. NGOs (nongovernment organisations) can help ensure that broader social and environmental considerations are taken into account. Collaboration would be required to overcome fragmentation, the chronic lack of alignment between innovation in design and after-use, and lack of standards, all challenges that must be resolved.” ■

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Profile

Lauded as one of the world’s great adventurers, Rick Ridgeway has a new mission – to drive sustainable change throughout the clothing industry.

MICHELLE DUNNER reports.

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ountaineer, environmentalist, author, filmmaker, businessman…

Rick Ridgeway has many strings to his bow. Part of the first US team to summit K2 and an explorer who has sought out experiences all over the world, Ridgeway has been living the adventurer’s dream for decades. National Geographic magazine even honoured him with its Lifetime Achievement in Adventure award.

As he approaches his 67th birthday in August, Ridgeway’s drive and energy are undimmed, but his focus is now squarely on making a difference for the planet – specifically through the way consumerism impacts the world’s resources. It seems counterintuitive for someone involved in the clothing business.

Californian-born Ridgeway personifies global outdoor clothing company Patagonia’s ethos. As vice president of Public Engagement he’s been behind some of the company’s more inventive campaigns.

Patagonia has become the master of ‘non marketing’. Successive campaigns have encouraged the company’s intensely loyal customers to think twice before purchasing new product. The upshot? Patagonia is thriving, yet doing everything it can to reduce its footprint through a range of innovative activities – driving technological improvement in the clothing industry and setting a new standard for product stewardship.

One such initiative, launched in Australia in March, is the Worn Wear campaign. “We launched this in the US three years ago as an extension of our business model, which was to make the best, most durable and longlasting products we can,” Ridgeway says.

“At the same time we needed to ensure our products were made with no unnecessary harm to the environment – it was part and parcel of our partnership with our customers who were interested in living responsibly.”

Worn Wear is designed to offer customers greater ‘end-of-life’ options.

Rather than throw out clothing, Patagonia

The ‘real’ Indiana Jones?

When Rolling Stone magazine profiled Ridgeway in the 1980s, during a period when he was focused on mountaineering adventures all over the world, he was described as the ‘real’ Indiana Jones.

“I was at a conference the year before last and just happened to be talking to Harrison Ford, who I know a bit. A mutual friend came up and made a comment about Indiana Jones; I don’t know if Harrison was amused by the reference or not.

“I’ve learned so much from life as an adventure and climber. It’s deeply informed me both as a businessperson and a human being. I wouldn’t be where I was today without those experiences.”

is actively encouraging the three Rs – repair, recycle, resell. “We started on this track in the 70s – we had repair stations in our stores, we developed videos to assist people in doing their own repairs.

“Look at the footprint of a jacket over its lifetime. The footprint reduces when the jacket is used for five, 10, 15 or even more than 20 years. We didn’t want jackets to be worn out after a year and end up in landfill.”

As part of, Black Friday, the US’s annual shopping frenzy on the day after Thanksgiving, Ridgeway devised a full-page advertisement in The New York Times, encouraging people not to buy Patagonia’s best-selling jacket. “We wanted customers to consider how they could get by with as few jackets as possible, when considering their personal footprint on the planet.

“The headline said ‘Don’t buy this jacket’ because we wanted to shock people. We wanted them to know the footprint behind producing each one – the hundreds of litres of water, the 20 pounds (nine kilograms) of greenhouse gas emissions.”

The campaign was driven from within.

“We didn’t implement Worn Wear because

“Look at the footprint of a jacket over its lifetime.

The footprint reduces when the jacket is used for five, 10, 15 or even more than 20 years. We didn’t want jackets to be worn out after a year and end up in landfill.” Rick Ridgeway www.cwsmagazine.com.au

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our customers were asking for it. Henry Ford’s famous quote said that if he listened to his customers he’d end up providing a faster horse. This is part of a global commitment to responsibility; the response from our customers in the US was robust and we anticipate that Australia will be the same.”

Ridgeway says every company should have its eye on the Millennial generation.

“To understand what’s important to them – social justice, environmental protection – is to understand the strength of your business model. There’s a reaction against unfettered consumption and this generation is looking to support companies that get that.”

There are some startling figures.

Ridgeway says by 2050 the world will be consuming up to seven times the resources that it can replenish on a natural basis. “You don’t need an MBA to know the result of that is bankruptcy; the Millennials know they’re inheriting that mess from us.”

Patagonia’s mission is to make the best product it can without unnecessary harm to the planet. “The creation of all consumer goods has an impact on the planet.

We’re starting to get our heads around some emerging trends and technologies that are very exciting,” says Ridgeway, adding that Patagonia is working with the agricultural sector to maximise soil health, carbon sequestration, water reduction and sustainability – particularly in farming organic cotton. The company is mapping its entire supply chain.

“One thing we’re very proud of is the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which we co-founded with Walmart in 2010. It’s a mission of creating standardised tools to measure the impact of a clothing business across the full value chain – from materials through to end-of-life. We look at the footprint of retail stores and give designers tools to help create products from materials that result in no unnecessary harm.

“Since the launch, we’ve grown the coalition to represent 40 percent of the apparel industry worldwide. With that level of industry involvement, we are now the de facto standard,” says Ridgeway.

“I think given our efforts in developing these standardised measurements, we’re ahead of the curve, but we’re far from being in a leading position in the circular economy. The auto industry and electronics are showing good leadership there.

“Government is mandating end-of-life strategies, but apparel has a long way to go.

Most people don’t think about what they can do with their clothing.” ■

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Feature: Waste management

FOOD FOR THOUGHT The movement to minimise avoidable food waste and create further value down the line is gathering momentum. JENNI DOWNES explains.

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very year, Australians spend more than $100 billion on food and beverages – making up almost half (47 percent) of the nation’s retail turnover. According to the New South Wales Government’s ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign, food retailers like supermarkets and grocery outlets are responsible for the majority of these sales at (61 percent), while the food hospitality sector such as cafés, restaurants and takeaway food outlets contribute to 23 percent.

Out of this $100 billion of purchased food, it is estimated that households throw away about 20 percent.

But how much food is wasted in the supermarket before it even reaches the consumer?

The exact value is unknown, but estimates put the food waste of the whole commercial and industrial sector at 1.915 million tonnes, with the food retail and hospitality sectors responsible for the majority. A report by Encycle Consulting in 2012 on commercial and industrial (C&I) waste and recycling by industry, identified that 37 percent of the total waste sent to landfi ll by food retailers is attributed directly to food waste. The EPA (Environment

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Protection Authority) in NSW has said large supermarkets contribute approximately 25 percent of food waste, even though they are already making considerable efforts to reduce stock losses through handling practices and systems for stock control.

Food waste includes both avoidable and unavoidable streams. Love Food Hate Waste has defi ned unavoidable food waste as items that cannot generally be sold or eaten. Examples include bones, fat and skin, mussel or shellfish shells, teabags and coffee grounds, eggshells, and fruit and vegetable peels, pips and stones. However, most food waste is avoidable. For businesses, this includes stock damaged in transit, handling or storage, and produce that is not used before the ‘sell-by’, ‘use-by’ or ‘best-before’ date. RMIT University research gives the reasons for this as poor stock ordering or stock rotation, or low sales.

Supermarket chains and retail industry peak bodies in Australia recommend that stores should not waste more than four percent of their produce turnover; however, data to determine whether this is realistic is thin on the ground. By comparison, the proportion of

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Feature food lost in the retail sector in the US and UK is between 10 and 13 percent, suggesting four percent is a stretch target for Australian food retailers.

Recently, major Australian supermarkets have begun implementing ‘ugly food’ campaigns, which sell misshapen and blemished produce, which would otherwise have been rejected for aesthetic reasons, at a heavily discounted price. The efficacy of these campaigns in reducing food waste is debated.

Supermarkets may use the campaigns to simply offer lower prices to farmers for ‘less than perfect’ looking produce, rather than actually expanding their purchases to include produce that would otherwise be wasted. In addition, the low price paid for the produce by consumers may lead them to value the food less and therefore be more prone to wasting it in the home. Still the reduction of aesthetic quality standards for fresh produce should increase the amount of food that makes it to market.

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Regardless, these campaigns cannot single-handedly tackle the issue of food waste by food retailers. What is needed is a concerted effort that tackles food waste in-store as well as up- and downstream.

So where do retailers and supermarkets that are not addressing the issue of food waste begin?

A simple hierarchy of goals provides a good starting point:

1

2

3

Avoid food waste

Donate leftover food to charity

Recycle unavoidable food waste

Source: Foodwastealliance.org

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Feature EXAMPLES OF FOOD RETAILERS IN AUSTRALIA AND OVERSEAS REDUCING FOOD WASTE IN-STORE Avoiding food waste

Turning ‘waste’ back into food

Diverting waste from landfill

Tesco in the UK conducted an audit of food waste and found that 41 percent occurred in the bakery departments.

It changed its processes to see less bread baked, more often, to reduce the amount of unpurchased bread that went stale.

Woolworths Australia has renewed its partnership with OzHarvest, and will donate edible food waste to OzHarvest, which collects and distributes it to people in need across Australia, tackling both food waste and food security at the same time.

An Australian supermarket chain trained staff to separate out food waste into dedicated bins. This is sent to a bioenergy facility that converts it into electricity and fertiliser. It helped the chain reach its target of less than 25 percent of waste sent to landfill.

Morrisons in the UK introduced a system of clearly identifiable blue dots on highly perishable produce, to help staff ensure the ‘chill chain’ on these products was never broken.

In France, a law was almost passed requiring all supermarkets to donate all unused food to charity. Despite the law not passing, most supermarket chains signed on voluntarily.

Sainsbury’s in the UK partnered with a waste management company to develop an on-site facility to power one store using its own surplus food waste.

Dansk Supermarked and Coop in Denmark have started to more heavily market food that’s about to expire, and consumers are buying it.

Brown’s Super Stores in the US partnered with universities and the EPA to create a food lab that creates products made out of surplus food (e.g. brown bananas transformed into banana ice-cream). Sixteen thousand kilograms of otherwise waste food was collected and converted in a month, with a potential retail value of US$90,000.

REDUCING FOOD WASTE UPSTREAM WITH SUPPLIER Decreasing produce rejected by aesthetic standards

Increasing popularity of uncommon meat cuts

Partnerships with suppliers

Harris Farm Australia implemented the ‘Imperfect Picks’ campaign to sell unusually-shaped or blemished produce that would otherwise have been rejected due to aesthetic quality standards at reduced prices.

Woolworths later followed suit with the ‘Odd Bunch’ campaign.

Harris Farm Australia implemented the ‘Curious Cuts’ campaign, to educate consumers on how to use the less common meat cuts. This aimed to increase the amount of uncommon cuts available for sale. The campaign included radio advertisements and recipe cards.

UK supermarkets are working with farmers and producer groups to make the most of the entire crop in the field or more of the carcass of animals farmed for meat.

Other measures include smarter ways to forecast demand for stock, and opportunities for decreasing losses in storage and transportation.

REDUCING FOOD WASTE DOWNSTREAM BY CONSUMERS Reducing purchasing of unneeded food

Educating about best before and expiry dates

Including storage and reuse info on packaging

Several years ago, Tesco in the UK started offering ‘buy one, get one later’ rather than the more common ‘buy one, get one free (now)’ deals to help reduce consumer food waste due to over-purchasing.

Asda in the UK has created clearer labels and dating codes to avoid consumer confusion about food expiry dates.

Following research that found that bag clips and on-pack labelling was the most useful channel for educating consumers, UK grocery retailers have begun including advice on how to use and store leftovers on packaging. Recipe cards also give customers ideas for using surplus food.

Similarly, Danish supermarket REMA 1000 eliminated volume discounts to make it less tempting for consumers to buy more food than they can use.

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In a similar approach, Co-operative Food (aka the Co-op) in the UK introduced home-storage labelling.

Tesco has introduced hints on paper delivery bags for produce purchased online to reduce food waste through the ‘Love Food Hate Waste’ campaign.

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Feature

Avoiding food waste is the first step. Retailers can focus on: ■ identifying where waste occurs (by undertaking audits) and then targeting high waste areas ■ training staff on storing, handling and discounting stock with a goal to reducing damage and spoilage ■ improving packaging to reduce damage during transport and storage, and ■ addressing aesthetic quality standards to enable more produce to be sold.

Once avoidance has been exhausted, if any food is left over, donating edible food to charity should be the next goal for retailers, and fi nally recycling any unavoidable waste through composting or conversion to bioenergy.

The retailer’s position at the heart of the supply chain means it also has great potential for influencing and reducing food waste occurring upstream (during processing and delivery by suppliers) and downstream in consumer households. Supplier partnerships and consumer education are key to this.

Despite the above, food retailers still face a number of challenges when tackling food waste. Industry experts note that the mechanisation of food supply logistics has resulted in a general down-skilling of retail staff. According to these experts, today’s food retail staff have less knowledge of the products that they are managing and fewer food handling skills than previous generations. The industry also has high staff turnover, meaning that investment in training must be regular and ongoing.

Consumer sentiment and preferences may also be an issue. In 2010, the then chief executive of the

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Australian Banana Growers’ Council, Tony Heidrich, stated in The Sydney Morning Herald: “A greengrocer was more prepared to accept blemishes on the skin... but the supermarket chains claim shoppers buy with their eyes and prefer their fruit and vegetables with as few blemishes as possible.”

Shifting aesthetic quality standards to include all edible food regardless of appearance must be prioritised.

Coupling these standards with consumer education on the nutritional value of blemished and misshapen food, may also help shift consumer behaviours in the right direction.

At the disposal end of the spectrum, some retailers may hold liability concerns over donating food to charity.

This has been addressed in some Australian states through the introduction of Good Samaritan legislation, which provides legal protection on health and safety issues when disposing of food for human consumption. An excellent guide has been developed to help retailers donate food by Love Food Hate Waste.

In addition, for retailers seeking to divert unavoidable food waste from landfi ll, there may be issues in fi nding appropriate local facilities for organics waste processing.

Despite these challenges, opportunities exist. Retailers can start small and build up their arsenal of food waste avoidance and responsible disposal over time. The benefit won’t just be for the environment, but also the business’ bottom line. ■ Jenni Downes is a research consultant at the Institute of Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney.

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Feature

Food waste in hospitality It is estimated that 1.915 million tonnes of food is wasted by the commercial and industrial sector, with almost half coming from the hospitality/ food services sector, according to the RMIT study prepared for CHEP Australia.

As with the food retail sector, the exact value of food waste in the Australian hospitality sector is unknown. In the UK, 18 percent of all food purchased in the sector is wasted, and 75 percent of this is avoidable. WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Program) says the waste is distributed unevenly across the sector, with the most waste coming from restaurants and pubs.

Value of food waste (£m)

Amount of food waste (kilo tonnes)

200kt

£750m 199

£682m 173

150kt

£563m

£357m

£375m

100kt £318m £277m 79

76

£241m 60

£188m

50kt

0kt

£0m Pubs

Restaurants

Hotels

Fast food

Lesiure outlets

Love Food Hate Waste has been active in quantifying the amount of waste across the hospitality sector in Australia. It reports 74 percent of business food waste is ‘pre-consumer’ (generated during the production of food before it is sold or served), while 26 percent of business food waste is ‘post-consumer’ (plate waste from clubs, pubs, restaurants, cafés and other food providers).

Hospitality business can control or influence both categories. For example, 27 percent of customers in a Love Food Hate Waste survey reported leaving food on their plate at the end of their meal. The main reason cited? Portion sizes were too big.

Addressing food waste can have real business benefits for the hospitality industry.

A UK study reveals that if restaurants reduced their food waste by just 20 percent they could save over $3500 a year on food costs and $2000 on waste disposal.

In order to begin, businesses should start by understanding exactly where and why food waste

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is being generated – is it through purchasing, preparation, cooking, storage, sales or service?

Businesses in New South Wales can access the NSW EPA’s ‘Bin Trim Assessment service’ for help undertaking food waste audits.

Businesses can use this information to help design their action plan. If preparation waste often consists of a particular off-cut, can this be incorporated into the menu? If customers leave large amounts of food on their plate, can portion sizes be reduced or take home containers offered? (Seventy-seven percent of restaurant goers are in favour of being offered a take home container, and 50 percent explicitly preferred to be offered rather than ask for one.)

If plate waste regularly features a particular side dish, can this be made optional? (Hot chips are left behind in a third of cases across the UK.) Key actions that businesses can take include: ■ careful design of menus to incorporate ‘nose to tail’ and ‘root to leaf’ cooking, and offering specials to shift ingredients that are in excess ■ creating options for portion sizes and side dishes so customers can choose what they want ■ sharpening tracking and ordering processes ■ improving receiving and storage systems and processes ■ training kitchen staff in food management and portion control ■ front of house initiatives to reduce plate waste, such as optional side dishes/ingredients, describing portion sizes and offering take home containers ■ avoiding excess edible food from becoming waste by donating to food rescue charities, and ■ diverting unavoidable food waste from landfill through organics recycling, composting or waste to energy.

Some innovative solutions by hospitality businesses include: ■ working with suppliers to determine minimum requirements to avoid unnecessary bulk purchases ■ offering ‘doggy bags’ with food waste avoidance messages stuck on them, such as ‘Thanks for not wasting me!’

■ running an online social media campaign where customers are encouraged to upload photos of their empty restaurant plates, and ■ switching to smaller plates but offering free ‘top ups’.

Links Key resources for avoiding food waste in the hospitality sector: www.lovefoodhatewaste.nsw.gov.au www.wrap.org.uk/food-waste-reduction

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5/05/16 7:55 AM

Case study

Will technology advances finally solve the issues dogging mattress recycling? NICK HARFORD reports.

Putting mattress recycling to bed

M

attress recycling has been a nightmare for many years, but we can all now sleep a bit easier as new approaches will be putting the problem to bed.

TIC Mattress Recycling has built Australia’s first automated mattress deconstruction facility, located in Melbourne’s western suburbs, and is on track to have another plant up and running in Sydney before the end of 2016.

The technology breaks down the problems that have plagued local government and consumers – namely that mattress recycling in Australia has to date been dogged by unsustainable operators, boom and bust cycles, and poor environmental and safety outcomes.

Indeed, TIC’s technological development has renewed government interest and support in mattress recycling, and the sector is poised to increase the recovery and recycling of mattresses nationally.

In January 2016 the New South Wales Government through the NSW Environmental Trust announced a $794,000 grant to TIC to enable fast-tracking of automated and advanced end-of-life mattress recycling for NSW. TIC Mattress Recycling managing director, Michael Warren, says his company’s approach automates mattress deconstruction to provide greater economies of scale, improved environmental outcomes, and reduced health and safety risks.

“The TIC system automatically deconstructs up to 60 mattresses per hour with almost no manual handling and produces clean streams of steel, foam and textiles,” says Warren. “Our system is contained and includes dust extraction, so there is not only protection of human health, but [it] also minimises the risks that

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materials or pollutants may escape from the process.”

Estimates are that between 1.2 and 1.5 million mattresses are disposed of in Australia each year and, according to a November 2012 study, 85 percent of endof-life mattresses could be ending up in landfill. The study, ‘Options for a Pilot Project to Increase Recycling of Mattresses’, was done for the Western Australian Department of Conservation and Environment and found significant resources were being lost due to a lack of recycling.

Another issue for policy-makers, local government, mattress manufacturers and retailers is that even the mattresses being recovered for recycling are often poorly managed, resulting in very low levels of resource recovery.

TIC says local government in particular should be aware of the price it pays for ‘recycling’. Warren says he has seen councils choose providers because they offer a marginally cheaper service.

“A council may save 50 cents or a dollar per mattress but, in reality, it is not paying for a recycling service,” he says. “A lot of mattresses are going to shredding operations or similar processes and they recover about 35 percent of the mattress by weight. It should be called what it really is, size reduction.”

Having said that, Warren says TIC is not against shredding and size reduction of mattresses in limited circumstances.

“Soiled, wet and damaged mattresses may be best shredded where handling and processing will cause safety risks or are deemed impractical,” he says.

“It may also be appropriate in some remote locations, as the movement of mattresses is expensive, and rural and regional centres can’t always access high quality recycling.”

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Case study

“If a scheme is to work and recover significant volumes of mattresses for recycling then there must be strong standards and specifications that ensure participants are achieving good environmental and social results.” – Michael Warren

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Mattresses are readily recyclable. On average, Australian mattresses weigh 30 kilograms and the steel, foam and textiles that are readily recyclable account for between 24 and 26 kilograms of material.

A 2015 study for the Victorian Government’s Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group (MWRRG) by Mobius Environmental found that the problem is growing. In Melbourne alone in 2015 the report found there were 427,000 new mattresses sold, and retailers report they are selling more mattresses every year as the population increases and mattress life decreases.

The report, ‘Mattress Recycling in Melbourne and Greater Geelong’, found that, of the mattresses being collected for recycling, almost half were being shredded.

This resulted in the situation that from all of the mattresses being ‘recycled’, 45 percent of the materials were actually still going to landfill.

The report also identified high levels of illegal dumping and that local government continues to carry the bulk of the costs for collection and recycling.

In a recent statement, chief executive of MWRRG, Rob Millard, says the report supports councils moving to new procurement models in order to drive good environmental and financial outcomes.

“Using these findings we will work with councils to develop best practice approaches, seek processing options from the market and create new collective procurement contracts to recycle mattresses from council hard waste collections and transfer stations,” says Millard in the statement.

TIC’s Michael Warren says current recovery practices rely on manual dismantling or shredding of whole mattresses and, while effective to an extent, these approaches have limitations and cannot meet government and community expectations.

“Manual practices cannot process significant volume without a lot of labour,” he says. “Manual processing also has inherent occupational health and safety risks related to the handling activity, as well as the potential exposure of workers to dust and pollutants. While some operators have been able to maintain manual operations over a reasonable period of time, manual mattress processing has generally proved to not be financially sustainable.”

Many parts of the world have now enacted more stringent regulations and

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Australian governments – national and state – have so far declined to support a product stewardship scheme for mattresses.

product stewardship schemes, and are rapidly implementing more sophisticated programs and driving more mattress recycling. The US, the UK, Canada and many countries in Europe are pursuing high resource recovery processes and growing mattress recycling.

In the US, a strong independent product stewardship scheme for mattresses has been established and California, among other states, now requires a levy of US$11 for each mattress sold. The money goes

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into a mattress recycling scheme where consumers can dispose of end-of-life mattresses for free and recycling is carried out by authorised recyclers to an audited standard.

The explosion of regulation and product stewardship overseas has fuelled interest in TIC’s technology. While Warren won’t detail specific enquiries, he says TIC is in advanced discussion with six other countries that want to purchase the technology.

Australian governments – national and state – have so far declined to support a product stewardship scheme for mattresses. A select group of Australia’s mattress manufacturers and retailers have commenced discussions to establish a take-back scheme; however, proposals to date still require consumers and local government to pay the cost of mattress collection and recycling.

Warren says he supports product stewardship and any such scheme must be open, transparent and accountable. “The key objectives of product stewardship are to respect the waste hierarchy and share waste management costs,” he says.

“If a scheme is to work and recover significant volumes of mattresses for recycling, then there must be strong standards and specifications that ensure participants are achieving good environmental and social results. And, of course, any scheme must have independence, strong governance and not be controlled by self-interest.

“A well-designed scheme that gives the whole supply chain – manufacturers, retailers, consumers, collectors and recyclers – the ability to participate and encourages competition will ensure a sustainable approach to increased mattress recycling.”

TIC Mattress Recycling commenced operations in 2013 with a combination of manual and automated processes and, with the new facility now being commissioned, is transitioning to fully automated operations. TIC’s technology is based on the RetourMatras system from the Netherlands that has been further developed over the last two years and tailored for Australian conditions. ■

Nick Harford is managing director of Equilibrium, the clients of which include TIC Group.

www.cwsmagazine.com.au

2/05/16 1:27 PM

There’s much corporate Australia can do to battle the plight of hunger on our streets, says SARAH PENNELL.

Opinion

The hidden issue

H

unger is one of Australia’s best kept secrets. Unbeknown to most of us, two million Australians are turning to charities and community groups to access food relief at some point every year.

It seems crazy that in the ‘lucky country’ there are people who literally are unable to meet their basic needs. But this is reality for one in 10 Australians – not knowing where their next meal will come from or eking out a meagre pantry that simply doesn’t provide adequate nutrition.

And it’s not who you think. We all have a mental picture of homeless people getting a basic meal from a soup van, but this is only one face of hunger in Australia today.

Increasingly, we’re seeing elderly people, students, single parents and the working poor struggling to make ends meet.

In fact, low-income families are the single biggest group seeking food aid.

We’re talking about families who have a breadwinner in the household, whose minimum wage doesn’t stretch when there is a family crisis such as ill health or when the winter utility bill comes in.

The saddest thing of all is that half of the two million people at risk are children.

They’re going to school without breakfast or, even worse, being kept at home because their parents can’t give them sandwiches or money for the tuck shop.

All of this is taking place in a country that is a veritable food bowl. In fact, we export 60 percent of all that we grow and produce.

It is a country where food is so plentiful we’ve allowed ourselves to become one of the most wasteful countries in the world with $8 billion worth of food thrown away every year – that’s 345 kilograms for every man, woman and child.

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Last year our partners provided 33 million kilograms of food and groceries with a retail value of over $200 million.

It is one thing for there to be hunger in a third world country due to crop failure, natural disaster or war, but it is entirely another matter to have it in our own backyard when there is peace, prosperity and plenty of food to go around. This is not an issue of charity but of social justice.

Australia is a signatory to the United Nations’ International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This document includes a commitment to a person’s right to feed themself with dignity; specifically that sufficient food is available, that people have the means to access it and that it adequately meets the individual’s dietary needs. In a nutshell they have a fundamental right to be free from hunger.

Foodbank is Australia’s largest food relief organisation, providing food for 166,000 meals a day to over 2400 charities and 1200 schools for distribution in the form of food relief. Our mission is to deliver the most food to the most people in need in the most efficient way.

We achieve this by working with the Australian food and grocery industry, including farmers, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, who contribute the essential products we need. Last year our partners provided 33 million kilograms of food and groceries with a retail value of

over $200 million. Some of this might have otherwise gone to waste, but a significant proportion of it was outright donations.

The food and groceries go to charities and community groups who use them to provide home hampers and emergency relief packages, as well as meals in hostels, shelters, drop-in centres and schools. The organisations tell us that this food is the first step in helping people out of crisis. It brings through their doors people who may not otherwise seek help and builds the trust that is essential to tackling the underlying causes of their issues.

Despite our best efforts, however, our annual report on the state of hunger in Australia reveals that 60,000 people are turned away from charities each month due to a shortage of food and resources. And the numbers are only increasing – more than 60 percent of agencies report that they’re seeing more people coming through their doors on a daily basis.

Foodbank believes we can, and must, set our sights on an Australia without hunger. It’s not an impossible dream, but something well within our reach. It can be achieved if we all decide that it’s important and commit to playing our part in bringing it about.

If you feel as I do, then all that’s required to take up the flag is informing yourself about the issue, becoming an advocate for the right to food and demanding action from everyone who can make a difference.

Value food by not wasting it and sharing what you don’t need yourself.

To find out more about Foodbank Australia, visit www.foodbank.org.au. ■

Sarah Pennell is general manager business operations for Foodbank Australia.

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2/05/16 1:34 PM

Feature: Product Stewardship It took a long time to get there, but tyres have joined a host of products and initiatives in the Australian market that are better managing product stewardship. JOHN GERTSAKIS and ROSE READ report.

T

he essence of product stewardship and extended producer responsibility (EPR) is focused on manufacturers, producers, retailers and brands taking greater environmental responsibility for their products across the life cycle. It also requires consumers and other relevant stakeholders to play their part and ensure responsible disposal of products through official programs and schemes.

In the last issue of CWS we covered some of the more established stewardship programs underway in Australia. In this second part, we report on some of the more nascent initiatives aimed at better managing the issues and impacts associated with various product categories and waste streams.

We outline what’s happening to better manage end-of-life issues with mercury-containing lamps, handheld batteries and tyres. Other programs and schemes, including drumMUSTER and the recently launched Paintback program, will be discussed in future issues of CWS.

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NOT TYRED OF MANAGING END-OF-LIFE

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Feature and keep waste lamps out of landfi ll. The focus is very much on workplace-based recycling where larger volumes of lamps can be more efficiently recovered and reprocessed. FluoroCycle provides little or no practical benefit or disposal convenience to the general public and householders who may wish to responsibly recycle their mercury-containing lamps.

While not a free program to end-users, FluoroCycle has a strong education and PR focus, underpinned by program signatories and facilitators.

There is little doubt that FluoroCycle’s recovery and recycling rate could be dramatically improved if producers and suppliers of relevant lighting products contributed more funding to make the program attractive to more organisations, institutions and government agencies, including a user-friendly model specifically for local government.

TYRE STEWARDSHIP AUSTRALIA www.tyrestewardship.org.au Product: tyres Announced in 2014, by the federal Minister for the Environment and tyre industry leaders, this voluntary scheme has been designed with two main purposes – to increase resource recovery and recycling, and minimise the environmental, health and safety impacts of all end-of-life tyres generated in Australia and to develop Australia’s tyre recycling industry and markets for tyrederived products.

It has taken a long time to come to fruition with various options, models, reports and regulatory impact statements undertaken in Australia over the past 15 years.

Funded by an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) approved levy of 25 cents per equivalent passenger unit on the sales of new tyres sold by participating tyre companies, the mission of the scheme is to reduce the volume of end-of-life tyres currently being disposed of in a manner that is

FLUOROCYCLE www.fluorocycle.org.au Product: mercury-containing lamps The majority of mercury-containing lamps still end up in Australian landfi lls, and it is a sad state of affairs that, in 2016, industry has not significantly increased the recovery and recycling rates. While the quantity found in individual lamps is negligible, it is the accumulation of mercury in landfi lls over time that poses a more serious risk to ecosystems and human health.

In response to striving for a more acceptable level of product recovery and waste management, the Lighting Council of Australia developed the FluoroCycle program. The program has continued to evolve and is now government accredited as a voluntary product stewardship scheme under the Product Stewardship Act. FluoroCycle’s core aim is to increase the national recycling rate of waste mercury-containing lamps

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Feature damaging to the environment. This is essentially via landfi ll, illegal dumping or undesirable export, and to increase the recycling rate through the promotion of economic uses of the resulting recycled feedstock of such tyres.

The scope of the scheme includes all vulcanised rubber tyres entering the Australian market for the first time. It applies to tyres that are loose replacements for use on, or already fitted to, motorised vehicles and nonmotorised trailers towed behind motorised vehicles. So, basically, it covers tyres for motorcycles, passenger cars, box trailers, caravans, light commercial vehicles, trucks and truck trailers, buses, mining and earth moving vehicles, cranes, excavators, graders, farm machinery and forklifts – but this is not a complete list by any means.

The scheme is being managed by the recently established not-for-profit organisation Tyre Stewardship Australia (TSA), which is made up of representatives from across the tyre supply chain such as tyre retailers, manufacturers, recyclers and collectors, including the Australia Motor Industry Federation.

It is estimated that in 2013/14 only five percent of the 51 million equivalent passenger unit standard passenger car tyres (each weighing 9.5 kilograms) discarded annually in Australia was recycled locally.

The rest was disposed to landfi ll, stockpiled, illegally dumped or exported overseas. The Tyre Product Stewardship Scheme is aiming to increase this recycling rate to 50 percent within five years.

The fi rst two initiatives of TSA have been to set up a voluntary accreditation scheme for participants involved in the collection, transport and processing of waste tyres and to establish a research fund to support projects that will lead to a direct increase in the local consumption of tyre-derived products that are currently on the market, such as crumb rubber, rubber granule and shredded tyre products.

Funds collected through the ACCC approved levy will not be used to fund the current collection and processing of tyres. This will continue to be funded by

consumers who pay voluntary environmental disposal levies charged by tyre retailers who them, in part, pass on to collectors, transporters and recyclers.

TSA is encouraging members of the tyre industry to become an accredited participant in this voluntary scheme. There are seven categories of participants – tyre importers/vehicle manufacturers/importers, retailers, fleet operators, local government, collectors/ transporters, recyclers and miners.

By joining the scheme and becoming accredited, each participant is not only committing to support the objectives of the scheme they are also committing to contribute to the environmentally sound use of end-of-life tyres, elimination of the inappropriate export of baled tyres from Australia, elimination of the illegal dumping of end-of-life tyres and elimination of disposal of end-of-life tyres to landfi ll.

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Feature

With just under 12 months of operation, membership of the scheme is slowly growing. Many of the main manufacturers and importers have joined the TSA scheme including: the Australian Motor Federation Industry, Bridgestone, Michelin, Pirelli, Goodyear/ Dunlop, Toyo Tyres, Tyrepower, Continental, Yokohama, BFGoodrich, Kelly Tyres, Firestone, General Tire, Kleber, Mazzini Tyres, Semperit, Uniroyal and Viking.

It is expected the scheme will be put forward for accreditation as a voluntary product stewardship program under the Product Stewardship Act. Another key organisation involved in tyre recycling is the Australian Tyre Recycling Association (ATRA).

Open to all relevant stakeholders, ATRA is a memberdriven group that adheres to the organisation’s principles and is involved in the processing of waste tyres, including retailers, collectors, recyclers and tyre manufacturers.

ATRA members are independently audited by specialist consultants who undertake data collection, satellite monitoring and site visits on behalf of the ATRA committee. This audit process provides assurance to the public and ATRA’s retail partners that their used tyres are being responsibly recycled. For more information visit the ATRA website (atra.org.au).

There are also various state and territory government regulations in place for the storage disposal and transportation of tyres.

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AUSTRALIAN BATTERY RECYCLING INITIATIVE www.batteryrecycling.org.au Product: all types of batteries Australia is well overdue for an industry-funded national collection and recycling program for handheld batteries.

The need to keep single-use and rechargeable batteries is now well-established, based on community expectations and environmental harm, especially where hazardous or toxic substances are involved, such as nickel and cadmium. The fact that small, handheld batteries are dealt with through extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations in Europe and parts of the US also underscores Australia’s laggard status on managing end-of-life batteries.

The Australian Battery Recycling Initiative (ABRI) has been leading the push for a national battery stewardship solution. ABRI has been formed by a group of battery manufacturers, recyclers, retailers, government bodies and environment groups to promote the collection, recycling and safe disposal of all batteries. Importantly, its role includes research, advocacy, education and stakeholder engagement to promote safe and environmentally responsible recycling of all batteries at end of life.

In the absence of battery manufacturers, brands and retailers delivering a voluntary national recycling

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Feature The rise of the service economy as characterised by collaborative consumption, the sharing economy, profit with purpose and other new business models, will dramatically shape and reconfigure the nature of product stewardship. service, ABRI is advocating an intelligent approach to co-regulatory intervention in order to compel producers to take life cycle responsibility for the products they place on the market. There is nothing new in this approach and many of the same brands doing nothing in Australia are allocating significant funding to battery stewardship in Europe and North America.

The glaring question is why battery producers have failed to apply their corporate social responsibility principles and programs in Australia, when they do so in other jurisdictions and regions? Given the growing momentum supporting battery stewardship by numerous key stakeholders, including key government agencies and specialist recyclers, it is likely that current industry engagement activities could deliver a positive outcome. If not, battery producers are poised to experience some intense heat from environment NGOs (non-government organisations), local councils and other interested stakeholders, eager to see the timely introduction of an industry-funded take-back scheme.

While planning and consultation aimed at a national scheme is underway, there are several smaller scale battery recycling initiatives that are noteworthy and provide a template for how a more comprehensive national program may be achieved: ■ Battery World stores offer a free battery recycling service for its customers. There are over 70 stores across the country.

■ ALDI is the fi rst supermarket to offer a national battery recycling program for customers. While any

brand of battery can be brought back, only AA, AAA, C, D and 9V sized batteries (rechargeable and nonrechargeable) are accepted through the program.

■ Mobile phones and mobile phone batteries are recycled through the MobileMuster program. They can be dropped off at over 3500 participating retail stores and local council facilities or returned in a reply paid envelope.

■ IKEA stores accept batteries for recycling at no cost to consumers.

■ Brisbane residents can recycle used power tool batteries though the pilot Power Tool Battery Back program that runs in participating Bunnings, Masters and TradeTools stores until June 2016. The program was devised as a means of measuring the demand and structure of a future permanent program.

THANKS TO GENOX THESE OLD TYRES WILL GO AROUND AGAIN. THAT’S APPLIED THINKING.

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Genox fully automatic tyre recycling plants are the complete solution for your trye recycling needs. There is no need for manual debeading of tyres and ambient temperature processing reduces operational costs and minimises secondary pollution.

Plus the plants are extremely easy to operate and maintain.

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Connect with us socially

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Feature

■ Sydney City Council has established a number of drop-off locations to recycle handheld batteries, mobile phones and light bulbs. In other urban and regional centres in NSW, Community Recycling Centres are being rolled out to collect batteries and other problem wastes with funding from NSW EPA. ■ Emergency and exit lighting batteries are being collected through the Lighting Council Australia’s EXITCYCLE program. The fi rst stage is a pilot in Queensland.

■ Planet Ark’s RecyclingNearYou website can be a useful source of information about battery recycling services in specific local government areas. (recyclingnearyou.com.au/batteries).

It is obvious that the piecemeal approach to battery collection and recycling in Australia requires a more coherent scheme that is adequately funded by battery producers and brands, as well as retailers that benefit from the sale of batteries.

End-of-life batteries (under five kilograms) are currently on the Australian Government’s product stewardship list for some form of accreditation or regulation under the Product Stewardship Act.

NOT ALL INDUSTRIES ARE EQUAL It becomes evident that some industry sectors are more advanced than others when it comes to managing product life cycles, especially end-of-life waste impacts.

The investment of some industries is significant and bodes well for effective and responsible management.

We are also seeing greater action upstream that reflects a more comprehensive approach to product stewardship, that is, positively influencing product design and manufacturing in order to minimise environmental impacts – and not just the usual focus on collecting and reprocessing waste.

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While we have outlined some examples of industrywide schemes and programs, it is important to note that there are many companies and brands that operate their own individual stewardship and takeback initiatives, and their contribution should not be underestimated.

Companies involved in textiles, clothing and footwear (such as Patagonia, Puma, Nike, Woven Image and North Face) have been long-term pioneers in product stewardship and EPR, as have some major companies involved in the production of floor coverings such as carpet tiles, broadloom carpet and resilient flooring.

With growing recognition that circular economy solutions are pivotal to achieving a sustainable future, the role and defi nition of product stewardship will evolve to become even more connected and coherent.

A good example of this is the tyre industry, which is investing in technologies to develop new markets for tyre-derived products.

More examples of innovative product and service design will emerge that clearly demonstrate how we dematerialise and focus on functional output rather than manufactured throughput.

The rise of the service economy as characterised by collaborative consumption, the sharing economy, profit with purpose and other new business models, will dramatically shape and reconfigure the nature of product stewardship.

Provided the disruption delivers improvement and net benefit, as opposed to endless online commentary, then we can assume much positive action and change in the future. ■ John Gertsakis is chief sustainability officer at Infoactiv and Rose Read the chief executive officer at MRI PSO.

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Marine debris is a modern litter issue, says DONNA SHIEL.

Opinion

The plastic soup “There’s a place in heaven for people like you.”

N

ow, whether you’re a religious person or not, when someone sees you picking up litter on the beach and says this to you, their appreciation is palpable. I smile, thank the gentleman and tell him it’s the least I can do.

Littered beaches are something I am, unfortunately, all too familiar with – cigarette butts standing in the sand like totems, bottles and fast food packaging clustered as modern day middens of temporary human habitation – all too soon they become marine debris, if not disposed of correctly.

Marine litter (debris), as defined by the United Nations Environment Program (2009), is any persistent, manufactured or processed solid material discarded, disposed of or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment. The nature and extent of this litter issue is persistent and growing exponentially, and in 2009 the Australian Government developed the ‘Threat Abatement Plan for the Impacts of Marine Debris on Vertebrate Marine Life’ under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act to assist in tackling it. A review of this document began in 2015.

In 2015 around one-quarter of respondents to the Victorian Litter Action Alliance (VLAA) Stakeholder Survey noted that marine/coastal litter and micro-plastics/ nurdles were key emerging issues for their organisations. For the uninitiated, nurdles are pre-production plastic pellets – lost as industrial waste via stormwater systems to oceans and for which a loss prevention program, Operation Clean Sweep, has recently been launched.

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A recent CSIRO study of Australian beaches found that threequarters of litter found on them was plastic.

The focus on marine debris, and in particular plastic litter, is by no means a ground-breaking finding. Plastics are being developed and produced at a rate never seen before, and are being used (and abused) in products as never before – microbeads being the case in point and, while technically not litter, their contribution to the oceanic plastic soup is one for concern.

Luckily this particular pollutant has been recognised, and countries and industry are reacting. In just the last few months, we have seen a number of countries ban microbeads, including the US and Canada and, prior to that, Holland.

According to not-for-profit group, Beat the Microbead, 329 brands from 59 different manufacturers have promised to remove plastic microbeads from their products.

Locally, retailers Coles, Woolworths and Aldi have also all committed to stop selling products containing microbeads by 2017.

Items that have not yet afforded such action include single-use plastic items, such as straws, takeaway coffee cups and lids, and plastic bags, to name a few. This is the type of waste that I, and many others, pick up from local beaches every day.

The impact of plastics on marine species has been well-documented – ingestion leading to starvation, entanglement causing drowning and so forth. Research shows that plastics can attract various

harmful chemical compounds, such as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which accumulate on the surface of the material.

Research is underway investigating their bioaccumulation and biomagnification through food webs.

Oceans support all life on earth.

They provide 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe and play an integral role in regulating our climate. I, for one, am not keen to test what reaction we get from continued pollution of our oceans.

What I am keen to test, however, is a collaborative, evidence-based approach.

An approach that harnesses the combined efforts of state and local governments, industry, education and research institutions and community to remove and prevent litter in our environment.

A recent CSIRO study of Australian beaches found that three-quarters of the litter found on them was plastic. The research demonstrates that the majority of litter on Australian beaches comes from human activity – it is not simply being swept in from other countries.

VLAA stakeholders were lucky enough to hear about this research at an event we held in November last year, ‘Let’s Talk About Marine Debris’. The event brought together representatives from the aforementioned groups to discuss the issue of marine debris and allow people to share their success stories, voice their concerns and potential solutions, and, most importantly, connect with other like-minded people.

And connections are the foundation to start something powerful. ■

Donna Shiel is VLAA Litter Champion – Victorian Litter Action Alliance/Sustainability Victoria

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Feature: Closing the loop

THE NEED TO MANAGE NUTRIENTS As populations surge, cities grow larger and demands on food production spiral, what of the waste streams generated?

TIM MUSTER reports.

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A

ustralian farmers are some of the most mechanised and least subsidised in the world – experts at producing good quality food for our population and for export.

According to the National Farmers’ Federation, each Australian farmer produces enough food annually to feed 600 people, 150 domestically and 450 overseas.

Now that Australia is one of the most urbanised societies in the world, there is a lot of food coming into our cities, but what goes back? Food is composed mostly of water, organic carbon and nutrients. In terms of life cycle, both water and carbon fi nd their way back to the farm through cycling in the atmosphere, but nutrients present a very different scenario, as some of them need to be physically shipped back to farms as fertilisers in order to close the resource loop.

The major nutrients required to grow food are nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K). Due to the large agricultural productivity of Australia, however, as a nation we are large consumers and importers of NPK. According to Fertilizer Australia, each year our farms apply around 850,000 tonnes of N, 282,000 tonnes of P and 130,000 tonnes of K. The efficiencies required in Australian agriculture mean that most of the fertilisers applied tend to be ‘inorganic’ in that the N originates from N-urea, the P as superphosphate from rock phosphate, and K from potash. Modern fertilising techniques use metered application to deliver exact amounts of fertiliser to particular sections of a paddock in order to increase yield and fi nancial returns on investment.

This occurs in order to maximise farm profits and to increase the efficiency in which fertilisers are taken up by crops.

The nutrients not taken up by agricultural crops are lost from the farm by a combination of processes including volatilisation, leaching into soils and runoff to creeks and rivers. Current research is being undertaken to develop new fertiliser forms that minimise environmental pollution, but do not limit yield. For example, in response to nutrient discharges impacting the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef, the sugar industry has invested in developing controlled release fertilisers to ensure their contribution to nutrient run-off is minimal.

FROM FARM TO TABLE Once crops are grown, nutrients start a journey towards human consumption. National waste reporting suggests that Australians discard around 15 to 20 percent of food (is not consumed) and, as a result food, waste typically makes up approximately one-third of municipal solid waste (MSW) and one-fi fth of commercial and industrial (C&I) waste streams. The National Waste Report estimates that each Australian throws out approximately 415 kilograms of food, but in addition to this, most of the nutrients from the food that is consumed end up in our wastewater.

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‘Fertilising’ your lemon tree As our cities begin to support more green growth, it is worthwhile considering what the demands would be on nutrient cycles. Using a productive analogy, fully producing lemon trees typically require about 0.45 to 0.65 kilograms N, 0.18 to 0.45 kilograms P, 0.2 to 0.45 kilograms K for each tree per year.

Each year the average person excretes about 8.5 kilograms N, one kilogram P and 2.3 kilograms K. Urine contains 70 percent of the N, 60 percent of the P and 70 percent of the K. So what has this got to do with the lemon tree? It is common folklore that peeing on your lemon tree is good for its growth. If one person were to pee on their lemon tree for an entire year, the amount of NPK delivered would be something of the order of six kilograms N, 0.6 kilograms P and 2.4 kilograms K. This is effectively enough to fertilise up to 12 fully established and fruit-bearing lemon trees.

Alternatively, one person’s urine would fertilise something like 300 square metres of irrigated lawns.

At present Australian cities have a population density of 20 people per hectare and our green spaces (non-hard surfaces) account for 40 percent of the total area. A back-of-the-envelope calculation

suggests that if all non-hard surfaces were treated as irrigated agricultural land, the nutrients in food coming into our cities would cover all of our fertiliser requirements (490 kilograms per hectare N, 60 kilograms per hectare P and 140 kilograms per hectare K).

In reality our urban green spaces are not all arable, irrigated and managed for productivity. In addition, we apply additional synthetic and organic fertilisers, meaning that there is a large oversupply of nutrients in our cities and that additional effort needs to be put into returning them back to mainstream agricultural production rather than disposing of them to the environment where they create other unwanted issues.

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WASTE IN CITIES AND THE IMPACTS ON WATER This country is the second highest producer of waste per person in the world; each Australian accounts for around 650 kilograms a year. This is second only to the US, which comes in at around 715 kilograms per person. Meanwhile urban water utilities in Australia quietly manage over 95 percent of the mass of all waste generated in our cities – the other five percent comprises all MSW, C&I and Construction and Demolition wastes, according to the National Waste Report and National Water Commission Performance Report.

It is perhaps no wonder that sewerage costs generally account for over 50 percent of the average water bill in Australia (which varies from state to state). Modern sewage treatment needs to meet its primary objective of sanitation, but must also deal with nutrients in an effective manner prior to disposal.

The oversupply of nutrients to the environment

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The second highest producer of waste per person in the world, each Australian accounts for around 650 kilograms a year.

leads to eutrophication, associated algal blooms and, at times, beach closures. For many years the wastewater industry did not intend recovering the nutrient value during the process, focusing on treated effluent disposal to meet environmental regulations.

More recently, however, there has been a shift in the potential role of the wastewater industry, which is now aware it could produce valuable resources. For example, there has been a steady increase in the recycling of water from wastewater, particularly through the millennium drought, and all larger cities around the country now capture energy (as methane) through wastewater anaerobic digestion facilities. Such facilities have the ability to become energy and carbon neutral.

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Nutrient production from wastewater has long been associated with biosolids, which contain the beneficial residues from wastewater treatment. Biosolids have the advantage of containing a wide range of nutrients and trace elements, but the disadvantage of being low in major nutrient value, variable in composition and often difficult to handle – making them less suited to high-tech agricultural production. Newer technologies are now being developed to recover nutrients in a concentrated form directly from wastewater.

New N & P fertiliser products can already be directly manufactured out of wastewater with a purity far superior to existing commercial fertilisers, some of which contain high levels of cadmium (for instance).

Such technologies will gradually be incorporated into upgraded sewage treatment facilities, enabling improved nutrient recycling.

MORE INNOVATIONS TO CLOSE THE LOOP There are a number of other businesses and initiatives that interact with organic wastes. For example, there are numerous organic sources of nutrients derived from manures and production by-products. Commercially, one can buy products such as Blood and Bone, Dynamic Lifter (composted poultry manure), Neutrog (composted and pelletised organics), compost and potting mix – each of which contribute to closing the loop on nutrients.

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In many cities, organic wastes are now starting to be taken to dedicated biodigestion facilities in order to generate electricity. Some examples are EarthPower, Yarra Valley Water and Federation Square, each of which have anaerobic digester facilities that take in food and other organic wastes with the waste-to-energy intent, but also have the ability to recover nutrients.

More recently there has been a resurgence of greening our cities. For instance, the 202020 Vision initiated by the Nursery and Garden Industry Australia and Horticulture Australia is a collaborative plan to increase the amount of green space in our cities by 20 percent by 2020.

Green spaces enhance natural values, can be designed to manage stormwater flows and assist in dissipating extreme heat events caused by urbanisation.

Such green spaces may be encouraged in residential living or may be community-based; they may be gardens, lawns or trees.

There are also moves to implement urban agriculture with the aim of producing food for the village from within the village. Such food cooperatives typically seek to bring together people with similar interests in gardening or food to develop a community identity and culture. More extreme examples of urban food production include building-integrated agriculture, such as in Singapore, in which entire high-

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Feature rise buildings produce food via hydroponics and utilise the natural advantages of the building to optimise water, nutrients and heating/cooling.

While it is debatable whether building-integrated agriculture is viable in urban areas with high land value, such forms of agriculture are appearing in Australia. A good example is Sundrop Farms based in Port Augusta, South Australia, which uses solar energy and seawater purification to produce tomatoes on a large scale.

There are many uncertainties as to how the food and nutrient cycle will play out in the future. Ideally food should be produced locally and efficiencies need to be gained in water, nutrient and energy usage to grow food.

It seems unlikely, however, that large amounts of food will be produced within cities due to the high cost of land.

Similarly, it is unlikely that boutique community gardens can achieve the efficiencies required to compete with the produce of professional farmers on a large scale. It may be that urban agriculture and associated farmers’ markets remain a niche domain, but cater more to community well-being and culture.

But the greening of our cities appears to give considerable opportunities when it comes to supplying both water and nutrients by recycling wastewater. This may be achieved through existing approaches of creating recycled water networks or increased sewer mining and perhaps direct underground irrigation. There are moves to install

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a greater proportion of urine separating toilets, which create a direct means to capture nutrients and also decrease wastewater treatment costs. Peri-urban areas with a decreased land value have many advantages in food production, being able to benefit from both nutrient catchment in cities and in utilising recycled storm and wastewater. The key here is to ensure that urban sprawl over good farming land is managed effectively.

Wastewater treatment facilities seem to be in the box seat in being able to have an impact on returning excess nutrients from cities back to agricultural productivity. As technologies are developed to directly manufacture fertilisers from wastewater, there will be an increased need to work in closely with end-users (farmers) with regards to the fertiliser requirements needed for efficient nutrient uptake by crops. The ability to close the loop on nutrients will work towards the sustainability of food production and create resilience against the need to import large amounts of fertiliser. â–

There has been a shift in the potential role of the wastewater industry, which is now aware it could produce valuable resources.

Dr Tim Muster is a principal research scientist with the CSIRO based at the Waite Campus, Adelaide.

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✗

No simple answer

The debate

The design phase needs to change for plastic bags to have a future says GRANT MUSGROVE.

GRANT MUSGROVE

T

he debate on plastic bags in Australia is rather unsophisticated and the problem is complex. At the outset, I should say there’s no simple answer, but the issue with plastic bags really arises at the design phase – they’re made for single-use.

There are well-meaning environmental groups legitimately concerned about the role of plastic bags in marine litter. But essentially plastic bags become one-way packaging, and therein lies the problem. That design, that purpose, almost guarantees a high percentage of plastic bags will end up in the marine ecosystem, in landfill or as a burden on recycling.

I’ve seen what other countries do and world’s best practice; essentially there are two principal measures.

The first is sending a price message. If the consumer wants a plastic bag, then they should pay for it. And that’s not just 10 cents.

I believe we should price them at a dollar. Those funds can then be put towards a whole range of interventions – marine litter and litter reduction generally. International experience tells us that tackling litter in general, and marine in particular, is an expensive process. It requires a change in behaviour across the population and, to drive that, there needs to be a cost associated with the item.

We need to avoid a situation where one-way garbage bags purchased in supermarkets do not simply replace one-way bags at the point of service. This suggests an equivalent level of taxation to purchase at the counter and would provide government with the large amounts of funding to change littering behaviour.

Second, and typically in advanced economies, I’ve seen plastic bags designed for reuse. They’re a higher grade of plastic, they’re thicker. The incentive to use them again, rather than just chuck them into either the litter stream or landfill, is very high. There are boutique operations around the world geared towards using these plastics as feedstock for recycling.

Indeed, wherever plastic bags are reused by households, and that often happens for their garbage, the recycling industry needs to employ plastic bag cutters. At the very least, we’ll separate and save whatever goodies are contained there from landfill or being washed into streams and oceans.

The total feedstock of plastic bags going into recycling at the moment is a fraction of a percent. While any percentage is meritworthy, there needs to be more done. There are some retailers out there spruiking their efforts in this area, but some would say that’s just a greenwash.

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There has to be more to the debate than saying plastic bags are good or bad. Plastic is a much maligned material, but it is 100 percent recyclable. In fact, Australia is currently importing a range of plastics for reuse and manufacture.

The average consumer may well have noticed over the years that the plastic bags they pick up in the supermarket have become a lot thinner. That’s squarely a cost issue. Essentially you’re paying for a hydrocarbon linked to the price of oil. Better plastic, that people will reuse, will be an upfront cost for retailers, but they need to balance that against the damage to their brand on appearing environmentally unconcerned and out of step with community attitudes.

You can ban the free plastic bags we take for granted, but will that solve the problem? Any course of action needs to be evidencebased.

The effectiveness of an outright ban is questionable. What’s really needed to tackle marine pollution and the littering problem is a revenue source attached to what economists call a ‘negative externality’. This is a more sustainable system that, based on international experience, would yield significant results.

Germany is doing it well. Japan also. Virtually all the advanced economies have a policy in place and Australia is behind the game.

It’s firmly on the agenda of all states and territories – it was discussed by the environment ministers at their last COAG (Council of Australian Governments) meeting. But we need to achieve a good policy outcome that doesn’t just hinge on two binary solutions – good or bad, ban or don’t.

Personally, I think plastic bags are unsustainable and ultimately will be phased out. Given most Australians live by the coast and are often confronted with the reality of plastic waste in the marine environment, it’s not an issue that is going to fade from community concern. The days of the single-use, super-lightweight plastic bag are numbered, as indeed are all micro-plastics that get into the marine environment.

But there needs to be behaviour change and political will.

Compared to the EU, we have a different regulatory environment.

There, a goal is identified and a decision made; for example, that 95 percent of all materials needs to be recycled within five years. They do what needs to be done to make that happen.

Here, sadly, I believe we have a weak-handed approach to regulation rather than devising effective ways of dealing with antisocial behaviours, and dumping plastic so that it flows to the marine environment is becoming a very large problem.

Grant Musgrove is the chief executive of the Australian Council on Recycling.

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✓

Three billion is a good start Planet Ark’s BRAD GRAY says the spirit is willing, but the implementation weak when it comes to banning single-use plastic bags.

BRAD GRAY

W

hile researching for this article I came across a piece in The Sydney Morning Herald with the headline, ‘Planet Ark welcomes Liberals' plastic bag ban’. The article went on to note “the party’s National Convention supported a ban on singleuse plastic bags provided by shops and supermarkets”. The article appeared in 2003. Much has happened since then, but whether or not an Australian has access to free plastic bags depends upon where they live.

Plastic is a phenomenal material. Its astounding versatility and durability has enabled us to make products that directly improve our standard of living and material well-being. Modern technologies as diverse as medical equipment, mobile phones, aircraft, clothing and food packaging are made possible by plastic.

Conversely, plastic’s durability, combined with its relative low cost, presents a slew of environmental problems. It is (mostly) made from non-renewable fossil fuels and its production is energy intensive. The average plastic bag has a useful life measured in just minutes, but it then persists for decades, centuries or even millennia.

Being lightweight it can readily escape from the waste system and is easily distributed throughout the environment as litter. Its impact on marine life is especially concerning.

Back in 2003 Australians were using almost 6.9 billion singleuse plastic bags each year. Through a range of strategies, including environment campaigns, retailer activities, state and local bans and individual action, that number is now around 3.9 billion. Three billion fewer bags is a good start, but there’s still a way to go.

The national landscape has changed considerably over the past decade. South Australia, the ACT, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, numerous towns and a single council – Fremantle – have enacted restrictions on retailers distributing free bags. In most cases, the measure has been a levy on supermarket-style bags and a prohibition on providing them free of charge.

In 2002 Ireland became the first country to impose a tax on single-use plastic bags. Within three years the number of bags used annually dropped from 1.3 billion to 113 million (or one-tenth). Since then an ever-growing list of jurisdictions have limited access to free bags. Some of these include Bangladesh, Belgium, China, Denmark, Ethiopia, Israel, Italy, Los Angeles, Mexico City, San Francisco, South Africa, United Arab Emirates and Wales. In other locations, like Norway and Germany, retailers impose a cost on plastic bags without government regulation.

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The debate

Breaking our dependence on single-use plastic bags will take effort.

Stakeholders need to consider: whether to implement a total or partial ban or a levy, which bags and which retailers are covered and which aren’t, and how the regulations will be enforced. Furthermore, retailers need to develop processes to address the changes, including procuring replacement stock, staff training, accounting for sales and so on.

In 2002 the Government and the Australian Retailers Association established a Code of Practice for the Management of Plastic Bags, which committed to achieving a 25 percent reduction in bag use in 2004 and 50 percent by 2005, Additionally, they agreed to achieve a 15 percent in-store bag recycling rate by 2004. The reduction target wasn’t achieved and the in-store recycling rate is still well below the target.

Breaking our dependence on singleuse plastic bags will take effort.

Stakeholders need to consider: whether to implement a total or partial ban or a levy, which bags and which retailers are covered and which aren’t, and how the regulations will be enforced.

Planet Ark ran the first public bag reduction campaign way back in 2002, but we recognise that education needs to be supported by action from governments and retailers. A ban or, better yet, a levy that provides an avoidable incentive for Australians to remember to take reusable bags when they go shopping is essential.

Research undertaken in South Australia immediately before its ban and in the following month showed a 30 percent increase in the number of shoppers bringing their own bag to the store. Further research by the Boomerang Alliance in 2015 indicated that 75 percent of people were highly supportive of the ban.

Australia now has the luxury to look around the world, and indeed around the country, to see that both shoppers and retailers readily adjust to bag reduction programs, and to assess which programs are the most effective. Planet Ark is relatively agnostic about the structure of any program, as long as it has a positive environmental impact.

It’s time for the remaining states to join the leaders and implement a system that reduces waste and litter. ■

Brad Gray is the head of Campaigns for Planet Ark.

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30/05/16 8:31 AM

Feature: Resource efficiency

CROSSING THE DIVIDE Long held up as the world leader in resource efficiency, the European Union is a work in progress, says FLORIAN FLACHENECKER.

I

n times of volatile resource prices, uncertain supply prospects, reindustrialisation attempts and concerns about environmental pressures associated with resource use, the concept of resource efficiency has gained increasing importance for policy-makers, fi rms, researchers and investors.

Resource efficiency – ‘doing more with less’ – is seen as one possibility to address these issues and deliver multiple economic and environmental benefits.

All these challenges are particularly relevant for the European Union (EU) due to three reasons.

The EU has one of the highest net imports of raw materials per capita worldwide. On a side note, the EU imported materials worth roughly €5.6 billion (around AUS$8.9 billion from Australia in 2014).

The EU aims to increase the contribution of its manufacturing industry to up 20 percent of GDP by 2020 (it’s currently about 15 percent). This is unlikely to be achievable without increasing the use of materials or resources more generally.

Environmental concerns associated with the use of resources are likely to remain on the political agenda,

especially in the follow-up to the EU’s intended nationally determined contribution from Paris to domestically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030 compared to 1990 levels.

So, the EU is attempting to achieve several objectives by increasing resource efficiency: reducing its import dependency on virgin raw materials, increasing the cost competitiveness of its industry and mitigating climate change. But how far has the EU been able to pave the way to a resource efficient economy?

WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED SO FAR? The European Commission (EC), executive body of the EU, declared resource efficiency a key priority in its growth strategy Europe 2020, introduced a ‘Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe’ in 2011 and established the European Resource Efficiency Platform in 2012, which comprises stakeholders from policymaking, business, non-governmental organisations and academia. They jointly formulated an ambitious call for coherent and stringent resource efficiency policies, including a quantitative target to increase

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Feature material productivity by 30 percent by 2030 compared to the 2014 level.

In December 2015, a revised Circular Economy Package was published by the EC, including a more prominent role for the European Investment Bank (EIB) in fi nancing resource efficiency projects.

Additionally, the EU supports a variety of research projects in the areas of resource efficiency and the circular economy.

These measures on the EU level are complemented by country-specific resource efficiency policies. For instance, eight out of 28 EU member states (among them Germany, Sweden, Italy and Austria) have a quantitative target for increasing material productivity or decreasing material use. Such targets are not directly comparable, however, due to diverging defi nitions and calculation methods. Furthermore, certain regions, for example Flanders in Belgium, have almost entirely phased out waste landfi lling.

Also, the private sector is increasingly considering its role and how it can grasp potential benefits from resource efficiency investments. Investment projects supported by multilateral development banks such as the EIB, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and national investment banks demonstrate that resource efficiency improvements can yield economic benefits for fi rms, while reducing environmental pressures.

Parts of the private sector have supported stakeholder groups, whose aim is to increase the public and political awareness of such benefits. For example, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation has played an important and quite successful role in making the economic case for a circular economy.

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES? Despite considerable progress in establishing resource efficiency as an explicit political and economic objective, there are three key challenges for the future of this agenda.

Political will The EU is very heterogeneous across its member states, both in terms of political ambitions and the status quo concerning the efficient use of resources. For instance, economies with a high industrial share tend to perform worse in productivity measures compared to countries with a strong service sector. The former may fi nd it more difficult to receive public support to agree to a productivity target.

Thus, the EU members have partly opposing interests and priorities. Additionally, the EU makes decisions based on the interplay between the member states, the EC and the European Parliament. Unsurprisingly, all of them have diverse and non-uniform opinions, which naturally results in cumbersome processes in fi nding compromises.

The political priorities have changed under the incumbent president of the EC, Jean-Claude Juncker, and can be summarised under the mantra of ‘jobs

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and growth’. Despite the explicit mentioning of the topic in this year’s Work Program of the EC and of the Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU, resource efficiency is not part of the EU’s priorities anymore and, instead of further developing the policy framework at a lower pace, efforts seem to have been reduced drastically.

This is exemplified by the revised Circular Economy Package, which does not feature a material productivity target, only a few binding measures and no systematic monitoring of resource efficiency developments. The important debate on suitable indicators has been postponed until 2017 due to a lack of political will on the issue. In short, not much progress has been made since Juncker took office in 2014. One reason may be that the topic is mainly seen as an environmental one and not an economic policy, thus enjoying a lower priority. One indication for this is that environmental ministries in the EU member states, environmental committees in parliaments and the environmental department in the EC are typically in charge of resource efficiency policies.

Resource indicators Resources and, in particular, materials are challenging to measure in one composite indicator. The reason is that materials comprise many different types, including crops, copper and gravel.

Currently, one of the most common ways to measure materials is in terms of their weight, putting most emphasis on heavy and frequently used materials such as construction minerals.

A range of indicators has been developed and debated in academia, but there is insufficient comparable data available across time for the EU countries, making it difficult to design policies based on this.

However, drafting policies based on imprecise measures is nothing new – GDP being the most prominent example of an imperfect indicator triggering a range of policies. Nevertheless, the accuracy and availability of comparable and comprehensive indicators remains a political bottleneck for introducing a material productivity target, and discussions on suitable indicators are inevitable.

The revised Circular Economy Package does not feature a material productivity target, only a few binding measures and no systematic monitoring of resource efficiency developments.

Evidence base Unlike energy efficiency, estimating the impacts of resource efficiency on the macroeconomy and fi rms is a relatively recent research area. For instance, we still have to better understand the effects of increasing resource efficiency on competitiveness. Although fi rms that face relatively high resource costs are likely to benefit, it may be (more) profitable for fi rms with lower resource inputs to invest in alternatives.

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Feature

Several case studies at the fi rm level suggest positive impacts of pursuing resource efficiency, which, up to now, have insufficiently been shown empirically on a more aggregated level. This current lack of evidence may obstruct stakeholders from even considering the issue in the fi rst place. Nonetheless, the evidence base is expanding, as better data becomes available and research institutes increasingly take up the topic.

These challenges are not new. There is, however, no silver bullet to solve them. All stakeholders are required to cooperate in tackling these remaining issues.

Researchers can help to improve the evidence base, the quality of indicators and the availability of data. Firms and investors can showcase the viability of resource efficiency investments. Policy-makers are particularly encouraged to address existing market failures, thus enabling and incentivising the private sector to increase resource efficiency.

There is a range of market failures associated with resource efficiency, such as negative environmental externalities, imperfect information on the potential as well as implementation of measures, and limited access to fi nance. Policy-makers can also set a favourable legal framework to facilitate resource efficiency measures (such as taxation), systematically monitor progress of countries and fi rms, support research and incentivise eco-innovations.

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LOST MOMENTUM The EU introduced several policy initiatives between 2011 and 2014, but has since lost momentum to push these promising attempts further. Priorities seem to have changed, leaving little political will for building on past achievements.

However, taking a break from the resource efficiency agenda is not an option given the EU’s own goals, dependencies and existing market failures. Clearly, researchers, fi rms and investors have to play their role in providing robust evidence and good practice examples of the effects of improving resource efficiency.

Nevertheless, democratically elected politicians ultimately have to transmit a credible and convincing storyline in order to build political support for addressing market failures, unlocking the potentials of resource efficiency, and delivering a fi rst crucial step into a more sustainable future. This remains work in progress. â– Florian Flachenecker is a doctoral researcher at University College London (UCL) Institute for Sustainable Resources and a Consultant for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The views, opinions, assumptions, statements and recommendations expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of UCL or the EBRD.

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Feature: Property

JUST HOW GREEN IS MY BUILDING? Commercial property sector initiatives to measure and compare recycling and waste management could see the data incorporated into existing building disclosure and green rating schemes, as JENNIFER HUGHES and KYLIE WILSON report.

I

n the commercial property sector, which is increasingly influenced by environmental concerns, owners, investors, tenants and developers rely heavily on benchmarks and targets to measure a building’s sustainability performance.

This information informs key decisions on value and leasing and is therefore increasingly important to the marketing, operation and transaction of buildings globally. However, the measurement and benchmarking of waste management practices in commercial buildings is relatively recent.

Since the introduction of the world’s fi rst green rating system in the UK in 1990, there has been a proliferation of rating systems and other green building initiatives around the world and they continue to evolve. Some of these initiatives have been driven at the national level by government legislation aimed at meeting climate change objectives, with the result that nationally-mandated schemes focus primarily on energy efficiency.

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For instance, the Commonwealth’s Building Energy Efficiency Disclosure Scheme, which was established in 2010 and applies to almost 900 buildings across Australia, requires owners to obtain a NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Rating System) energy efficiency star rating and include that rating on any advertisement for the sale or lease of a commercial building with a net lettable area of 2000 cubic metres or more. By comparison, voluntary initiatives have had a broader, more holistic, focus on other aspects of building operations, including water and more recently, waste.

WASTE MANAGEMENT IN BUILDINGS Waste management is an important issue for buildings, with 52 percent of all waste in the City of Sydney coming from commercial and industrial buildings. The NSW EPA has indicated that although resource recovery systems in commercial buildings have the potential to divert significant amounts of waste from landfi ll, current recovery rates remain low.

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Monitoring, reporting and benchmarking tools for waste management in the property sector, therefore, have a huge potential to encourage better waste management practices and increase resource recovery rates throughout the sector.

Monitoring, reporting and benchmarking tools for waste management in the property sector, therefore, have a huge potential to encourage better waste management practices and increase resource recovery rates throughout the sector.

As Patrick Arnold and Scott Ebsary of Foresight Environmental reported in Issue One of CWS, there are still considerable difficulties involved in reporting on waste and recycling rates for buildings because

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properties may report waste generation and recycling rate figures using a number of different methodologies.

In addition, waste rating tools like NABERS have, to date, experienced low uptake across the sector.

NABERS WASTE TOOL – WILL IT BE REVAMPED? NABERS is the most widely used scheme for benchmarking and rating the environmental performance of Australian buildings. Developed in 2005, it is managed nationally by the NSW Government on behalf of the Commonwealth, state and territory governments.

Initially NABERS focused on water and energy efficiency ratings, but in 2008, the NSW Government launched a waste assessment tool for commercial office buildings. Like other NABERS benchmarks, this tool is a one-to-five star scale based on the range of market performance with 2.5 stars representing market average performance.

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Feature The waste tool was developed in consultation with industry stakeholders and the rating benchmarks were set based on an extensive study covering waste management systems in office buildings throughout Australia. The assessment is based on total waste mass generated, and the amount of that waste that is recycled. An on-site audit is conducted by an accredited assessor whereby waste is weighed over 10 consecutive working days, with the amount of contamination in the recycling also assessed to determine the building’s recycling rate.

While the NABERS energy rating tool has been widely adopted with over 72 percent market penetration, there was limited uptake of NABERS waste ratings and in 2014 the NSW Government, with the assistance of the Victorian Government launched a comprehensive review of this tool. In-depth industry consultations and pilot projects continued throughout

While the NABERS energy rating tool has been widely adopted with over 72 percent market penetration, there was limited uptake of NABERS waste ratings.

2015 and it is expected that a revamped waste tool will be released in the near future.

During this process, critics have called for greater robustness and transparency in the development and setting of benchmarks from the widest sample of buildings as possible. The Better Buildings Partnership (BBP) Operational Waste Guidelines may help to fi ll this gap.

The guidelines were published in July 2015 and provide a voluntary guidebook on best practice waste management for properties. It is expected that use of the guidelines will promote comparable data and transparent reporting processes, which will drive better standards and benchmarking for operational waste. The guidelines simply seek to provide a common set of measures, a transparent method of comparing performance and a mechanism for buildings to iteratively improve performance over time.

Within the guidelines, the waste data integrity rating protocol essentially grades the quality of the data received and collected by a building. It levels the playing field and creates a structure of reporting data where comparisons between different buildings can be meaningful.

For instance, the guideline suggests that commercial waste collection contracts should be charged based on the weight of material collected, as weight is a more accurate measurement of waste, especially for general waste. However, where weights cannot be obtained, building owners or managers may establish sitespecific densities. Where site-specific densities are not available, the guidelines provide industry conversion factors. Where a building’s waste and recycling streams are weighed at the time of collection and where contamination in streams is accounted for, the higher the degree of data integrity.

WILL WE SEE LEGISLATION ON DISCLOSURE REQUIREMENTS? In the distant future, we may see the passage of legislation at the federal or state level imposing building waste disclosure requirements. Given the present reliance on the NABERS energy rating tool for the Commonwealth’s Building Energy Efficiency Disclosure Scheme, it is foreseeable that any waste disclosure requirements would similarly be based on the NABERS energy tool.

However, before we get to that point, consistent, industry-wide reporting and measurement is needed and the BBP guidelines are a huge step in the right direction.

Not only will they enable building owners and managers to evaluate the success of waste and recycling programs and better understand their own expenditure on waste management, but they may also help to develop robust industry-wide data on which future benchmarking and disclosure requirements may be based.

In other words, watch this space. ■ Jennifer Hughes is a partner specialising in environment and planning law, and Kylie Wilson an associate at Baker & McKenzie.

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JENI CHRISTENSEN asks: how do we get sustainable procurement on the agenda in Australia?

Opinion

Sustainable procurement

W

hile Australia is often thought of as an early adopter and innovator, sustainable and ethical procurement is an area in which this country is lagging behind. There is a focus on product stewardship and end-of-life strategies, but targeting procurement practices seems to have slipped through the cracks.

The UK introduced the Modern Slavery Act last year, making it an offence for British companies to procure products arising from slavery, servitude, forced labour or exploitation. It’s part of the UK’s commitment to ensure sustainable procurement is strongly embedded, particularly within its public sector.

But the situation in Australia is disappointing. We need to ensure procurement professionals understand the ethics and embrace international obligations when it comes to selecting and managing suppliers, as well as demonstrating integrity in their own actions – including managing conflicts of interest. There are, however, some signs this is changing.

The Victorian Government Procurement Board (VGPB) has been working on procurement reform since February 2013, targeting five policies – governance, market analysis and review, market approach, contract management and contract disclosure. A transitional implementation plan, under the auspices of the Financial Management Act, was meant to have come into effect as of 1 January last year.

Essentially, the aim was to enhance procurement by upskilling capacity, capability and further emphasis on valuefor-money. The policies focused on the removal of the previous threshold-based procurement approach in favour of one based on risk and complexity.

In addition to the five policies, VGPB has published ‘good practice’ guides and templates, including a ‘Guide to

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“We need to ensure procurement professionals understand the ethics and embrace international obligations when it comes to selecting and managing suppliers.”

Environmental Impact’ and consideration for ‘Disposal of Assets’ as part of the new approach to the management and disclosure of contracts. But many Victorian government departments are focusing only on the five that have been mandated, leading to a lack of consistency across the board. Adding to the problem is that there are delays in the transition process – which is noted as still ongoing in 2016.

Sustainable procurement is very much government-led and supported by legislation in the UK, to embed monitoring, measuring and reporting. Australia also needs a government catalyst for change, to promote the benefits and gain organisational buy-in to support and develop robust strategies in this area and professionalise procurement, leading to what we believe is the ‘holy grail’ – the appointment of a chief procurement officer.

What is sustainable procurement?

It’s a process whereby organisations meet their needs for goods, services, works and utilities in a way that achieves valuefor-money on a whole-of-life basis. This means generating benefits not only to the organisation, but also to society and the economy, while minimising damage to the environment.

How do we implement sustainable procurement in Australia?

Australia needs organisational buy-in and support to embed a policy of sustainable procurement for goods and/or services, including capital projects to drive Environmental Sustainable Design (ESD).

Sustainable procurement needs to be strongly embedded within tenders and specifications; however, this is a ‘balancing act’ and needs to be discussed upfront with a project manager before commencing the procurement process.

The benefits of ethical sourcing and sustainable procurement are manifold: ■ Social/people • labour standards (International Labour Organisation), including diversity, fair hiring practices, human rights • health and safety – good working conditions ■ Environmental/planet • the environment – waste prevention and management of end of life/ disposal, and ■ Economic/profit • business ethics • value-for-money (not lowest cost).

Value-for-money considerations should include the price and quality of a product and service, and may include, but are not limited to, goods and/or services that contain recyclable content, are recyclable, minimise waste and greenhouse gas emissions, conserve energy and water and minimise habitat destruction and environmental degradation and are nontoxic.

The UK system is mature and embedded.

There’s clearly an opportunity for Australian business to make a stand. ■

Jeni Christensen is a Melbourne-based procurement professional.

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Case study

Where people see waste, Closed Loop’s Rob Pascoe sees wasted resources, as BRENDAN LEE explains.

Paddock to plate to paddock

P

ulling up at The Farmer’s Place, at the gateway to Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, the first thing that hits you is the rich interwoven texture of smells. Set on a 80-hectare working farm, this café and farmers’ market presents a blend of aromas combining food preparation and freshly brewed coffee alongside hay and livestock.

These smells are easy to recognise, but there’s more: a gentle waft of something harder to place – like molasses or fermenting apples or Christmas cake.

This injection into the aromatic blend is courtesy of the Closed Loop on-site rapid composting unit, which turns food waste into fertiliser within 24 hours.

Rather than being hidden away in a waste compound, the unit sits proudly on the deck, alongside restaurant diners, as it epitomises the sustainable principles and philosophy that is the central, integrated theme of the venue.

The unit uses microbes, heat and gentle agitation to process food waste. The combination of biological and physical processes reduces the quantity of material by 80 to 90 percent over a 24-hour period within an aerobic environment. The composter at The Farmer’s Place has a daily capacity of 60 kilograms of food waste, and the Closed Loop range includes units that can process between 20 and 1000 kilograms per day.

Virtually all types of food waste can go into the Closed Loop units, including those that challenge traditional composting systems such as meat, citrus and onion.

They’ll even process bones from chicken frames and seafood. The only exclusions are bulk oils, larger bones or other solid material like oyster shells.

The system operates in a continuous fashion, with food waste added as it is generated. Harvesting the output takes

Waste or resources being wasted?

The Farmer’s Place is the latest sustainability project for Closed Loop’s founder, Rob Pascoe.

“I wanted to create a place where we could practically demonstrate our central philosophies,” he says.

“Through Closed Loop we help introduce systems to clients that change the way they approach waste management. Where others see waste, we see resources being wasted. We work out ways to recover those resources in an efficient manner that, more often than not, also provides economic benefit.

“At The Farmer’s Place, I get to take it all a step or two further.

Here we have an integrated working farm, café and marketplace with zero waste to landfill. It was built from recycled materials and is self-sufficient in terms of energy and water.”

The main structure of The Farmer’s Place is a rustic space made of recycled shipping containers and reclaimed timber. The corrugated iron roof was rescued from a primary school demolition and the timber floorboards were salvaged from the old Dimmeys store in Melbourne. Adorning the interior are light fittings fashioned from craypots, jars and colanders, while outside the fences are made from rope once used in the mussel beds of the Bellarine Peninsula.

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Case study

This same technology is used by some of the world’s best restaurants and hospitality institutions including Noma in Copenhagen, D.O.M in São Paulo, the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne and Urbane restaurant in Brisbane.

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place weekly. Much like a sourdough or yoghurt culture, only around two-thirds of the material is harvested, with the remainder being left in place as a ‘starter culture’ to process the next load of food waste.

This same technology is used by some of the world’s best restaurants and hospitality institutions, including Noma in Copenhagen, D.O.M in São Paulo, the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne and Urbane restaurant in Brisbane.

The output from the composter is a rich concentration of the inputs. It contains very high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous, which are the key elements of fertilisers.

The output at The Farmer’s Place is mixed with soil and used to fertilise the vegetable gardens, providing nourishment to grow more produce for the café – a true paddock to plate to paddock operation.

“Australians throw out an estimated 14 million tonnes of food per year at a huge

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Case study

environmental and financial cost,” says Rob Pascoe, owner of The Farmer’s Place and Closed Loop’s managing director. “At the same time, we spend millions on chemicalbased fertilisers to nourish our nutrient depleted soil.

“Australian soils are more nutrient-poor than any other continent. It just doesn’t make sense to landfill food waste – it is a valuable resource that we could use productively. Widespread use of organic compost could address soil improvement needs as well as minimising our reliance on artificial fertilisers.”

The 50 kilograms of food waste that goes into the Closed Loop composter each day amounts to 18 tonnes per year, which would otherwise go to landfill. In a landfill, food waste is mixed in with other waste streams and there it rots, generating methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times as potent as carbon dioxide and with a lifespan three to four times longer. Instead, around 2.5 tonnes of valuable fertiliser is produced, which is returned to the soil.

“By demonstrating the complete food cycle here at The Farmer’s Place, we enable visitors to reconnect with their food and where it comes from,” says Pascoe.

“The philosophy of sustainable food

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Australian soils are more nutrient-poor than any other continent. It just doesn’t make sense to landfill food waste – it is a valuable resource that we could use productively.

production, use and disposal guides all of our operations from the menu design based on seasonal ingredients grown on-site or sourced from local suppliers, to the on-site composting of all food waste generated in the restaurant – it is extremely important for us to minimise our impact on the environment at all points of the food cycle.”

Pascoe is keen for all who visit to be able to identify sustainability in action – from seeing responsible waste, water and energy practices to being able to engage with the whole food cycle. He believes that food sustainability and security is a major concern for Australia and aims to raise awareness of this vital issue through The Farmer’s Place activities.

“It is essential that we are mindful of how we produce, package, transport, use and dispose of our food,” he adds.

Supporting local food production and using seasonal produce addresses many of these issues. Local production greatly reduces the food miles associated with what we eat and supports local communities, many of whom are doing it tough. Choosing seasonal food means an abundant and more readily available supply, which can reduce associated transport and food costs. Both result in a more sustainable food cycle and can provide significant triple bottom line benefits – the basis of sustainable food for the future.

Apart from a menu that changes with the seasons, the on-site farmers’ market is stocked with fresh produce, grains, meats, dairy products and condiments from local suppliers. Local produce is celebrated at The Farmer’s Place through events such as the Grower’s Dinner, where local farmers donate produce they have grown themselves, which is then shared with other local farmers in a feast cooked up by The Farmer’s Place chef and his team.

Brendan Lee is the sales and strategic marketing manager for Closed Loop.

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A wrap-up of national and state initiatives and reports showcasing waste management and resource recovery.

Round-up

The state of play NATIONAL Waste production up 163 percent – ABS The latest environmental report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows waste material production is the fastest growing environmental indicator – up 163 percent since 1996.

The Australian Environmental-Economic Accounts 2016 show that, over the period 1996/97 to 2013/14, Australian economic production rose 73 percent, but the indicators of environmental pressure – waste production, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions – also all increased. The only metric to fall was water consumption, down 16 percent.

While waste production was the biggest increase and the fastest growing sector, energy consumption was up 31 percent and emissions up 20 percent.

The report valued the Australian waste management industry at $10.4 billion in 2011/12 (up eight percent on the previous year) and notes that waste material exports continue to grow. It says there are three ‘destinations’ for Australian waste – disposal to landfill, recovery for use in the domestic recovery and export.

Private waste management businesses (which include public trading enterprises) supplied just over half, $5.6 billion or 53 percent, of the value of these services, while local government authorities provided just over one-quarter at $2.7 billion, or 26 percent. The remaining $2.1 billion of waste management services was provided by businesses not primarily undertaking waste management, of which a large proportion (39 percent or $810 million) was provided by the construction industry, the largest contributor to overall waste levels.

Households spent $1.9 billion on waste management services (recyclable and nonrecyclable combined), mostly on municipal

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rates related to waste management services.

In 2010/11, 60 percent or $3.2 billion of the total value of waste products supplied to the economy was consumed domestically with the remainder exported. Of those recyclable/recoverable materials exported, metal was the most valuable material at $1.8 billion in 2010/11, which represented a 34 percent increase from a year earlier.

Not all waste that is produced has a negative value. Where the owner/discarder of the waste materials receives payment for the waste, it is termed a waste product (such as paper and scrap metal). The value of waste products supplied to the economy increased 18 percent to $5.4 billion in 2010/11. The waste management industry supplied 53 percent of the value of these products in the form of sales of raw materials (paper, cardboard, metals, organic materials etc) in 2010/11 (up from 49 percent in 2009/10). The remaining 47 percent of waste products were supplied by industries that included mining, manufacturing, wholesale and retail, which, combined, made up 89 percent of the remaining income from sale of waste products.

Federal Safeguard Mechanism Federal Minister for the Environment Greg Hunt has released guidelines for the Government’s Emissions Reduction Fund Safeguard Mechanism and flagged it will come into force as of 1 July this year.

The mechanism is designed to stop large facilities from exceeding historical greenhouse gas emission levels. A statement released by the Minister says this refers to any facility that reports 100,000 tonnes or more of direct emissions in any given financial year. Hunt says the threshold should apply to around 140 large businesses and represent around half of Australia’s total

emissions. This has the potential to capture some of Australia’s largest waste facilities, including landfill sites – and may need to apply to the Clean Energy Regulator to negotiate options.

Working alongside the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), Hunt says the Government’s goal is to cut greenhouse gas emissions to five percent below 2000 levels by 2020 and to 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. It comprises an element to credit emissions reductions, a fund to purchase emissions reductions and a safeguard mechanism to ensure that these reductions are not displaced by a significant rise in emissions above businessas-usual levels elsewhere in the economy.

VICTORIA Landfill licensing: updated EPA guidelines There are some significant areas of interest for the waste management and resource recovery communities in the latest EPA (Environment Protection Authority) landfill licensing guidelines.

Publication 1619 is a draft update; landfill operators and environmental auditors will find the latest guidance on how to gain EPA approval for construction of new landfill cells and leachate ponds at existing landfills.

The focus of the changes, according to the report, is to provide more clarity on EPA’s expectations, and to enable an improved, risk-based approach to site-specific risks.

Submissions on the draft closed on 12 May.

ACT Battery storage program The ACT Government will invest $25 million in a program to ramp up battery storage in over 5000 local homes and businesses to increase the use of electricity from renewable energy.

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ACT Minister for Environment and Climate Change Simon Corbell says the Government has a goal of sourcing 90 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The Government says the roll-out of the devices to store power from solar panels will be the largest deployment of battery storage outside of Germany.

QUEENSLAND Just how much goes to waste?

The Queensland Government has decided to research council landfill sites to determine what levels of recyclable product end up in the general waste stream. In what is being seen as research likely to underpin the introduction of any container deposit scheme in the state, Queensland Minister for Environment and Heritage Protection Dr Steven Miles has engaged waste industry consultants to calculate some key metrics – including how much aluminium and glass the state could recycle.

The research began in late April. “We will be working with councils to specially unload some of the garbage trucks before they get to their tips, in order to get a better understanding of what is in the trucks, and the composition of general waste," says Miles. “The process is anonymous, there is no identification of any individual person or household. It does not involve examination of household wheelie bins.”

Councils participating in the research project include Cooktown, Cairns, Central Highlands, Rockhampton, Gold Coast, Western Downs and Townsville.

“The Palaszczuk Government is also closely watching the CDS (container deposit scheme) discussions in New South Wales, where the Government has committed to introducing a CDS by 2017,” says Miles. “If the Queensland Government does decide to introduce a container deposit scheme, it would be desirable that the two schemes are consistent in their key design elements.”

Queensland remains the only mainland state not to have a landfill levy.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA Draft environmental standard on composting Consultation will close on 6 June on the latest round of updates to Western Australia’s composting draft environmental standard.

The update process, which began in June last year, has seen a number of significant changes raised by stakeholders and working groups, including the Department of Water and the Department of Agriculture. As a result, the Department of Environmental Regulation has decided to open the draft for further public comment.

The draft covers off excluded locations, groundwater risks, unacceptable feedstock, contaminates, product specifications, environmental monitoring and the transition of facilities.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA Trade waste initiative With a focus on the food and beverage manufacturing industry, the Office of Green Industries SA has launched a two-year ‘Trade Waste Transition Initiative’ aimed at giving businesses an incentive to reduce costs with productivity improvements, and better use of waste and other resources.

The $5 million program will provide two components to South Australian businesses – resource productivity assessments, where successful applicants can obtain grant funding that covers up to half of the assessment cost, and trade waste implementation grants, specific to food and beverage manufacturing. Again, the funding will cover up to 50 percent of trade waste improvement activities.

The program is being rolled out in collaboration with SA Water.

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Events AUSTRALASIAN WASTE AND RECYCLING EXPO 2016 AWRE moves to Sydney in August to bring together leading suppliers and services organisations for two days of industry insights, technology updates and an exhibition.

When: 10-11 August Where: Sydney Showground More information: www.awre.com.au

ENVIRO KEYNOTE SESSION As a lead-up to Enviro’17, the Waste Management Association of Australia (WMAA) and AWRE have collaborated to present a special keynote session during the AWRE expo, and complement their 2016 seminar series.

When: Wednesday 10 August 2pm Where: Sydney Showground, Sydney Olympic Park More information: www.waa.asn.au

WASTE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN CONFERENCE 2016 With a new state waste strategy, and regulatory reform under way, WMAA has announced the South Australian Waste Conference – An Agenda for a Circular Economy. The conference program will cover off investment, infrastructure and innovation across the most contemporary of learnings and experiences in waste management, recycling, resource recovery and remanufacturing.

When: 22-23 September Where: Stamford Grand Adelaide Hotel More information: 02 8746 5000

WASTE EXPO Education, networking and exhibits showcasing resource and materials efficiency, industry ecology and the circular economy are all part of this two-day conference in Melbourne. This year’s program will also look at education, communication and engagement, energy from waste, landfill and product stewardship programs among other topics.

When: 4-5 October Where: Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre More information: www.wasteexpo.com.au

ENERGY FROM WASTE CONFERENCE 2016 With a theme of ‘waste today, energy tomorrow’, this conference will explore the full life cycle potential of energy from waste in Australia – from project creation to technologies, regulatory settings, stakeholder engagement, bankability, funding, integration with other infrastructure, procurement, design, construction, operation, maintenance and aftercare. Keynote presentations will include experienced practitioners who are instrumental in developing, delivering and operating energy from waste plants overseas.

When: 25-27 October Where: Novotel Sydney, Brighton Beach More information: www.energyfromwaste.com.au

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2/05/16 1:54 PM

CONTACT US TODAY FOR YOUR FREE TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION! Don’t miss out on the opportunity to receive this free resource – LIMITED TIME ONLY!

shop.niche.com.au free call 1800 804 160 Terms and conditions: Offer expires 31 July 2016 or when otherwise stipulated by Niche Media and is valid for print subscribers in Australia only. Niche Media reserves the right to cancel trial subscriptions.

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31/05/16 11:06 AM

UNCOVER SOLUTIONS & INNOVATIONS

AT AUSTRALASIA’S LEADING WASTE AND RECYCLING EXPO The Australasian Waste & Recycling Expo returns to Sydney this year, bringing together industry leaders and professionals for two days of networking, discussion and innovation.

REGISTER FREE AT AWRE.COM.AU

*

10-11 AUGUST 2016 SYDNEY SHOWGROUND SYDNEY OLYMPIC PARK

*Entry is free for the exhibition only. Passes for the Seminar Series, ENVIRO Keynote Sessions and Networking Events can be purchased at an additional cost.

Key Industry Partner

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Supported by

Principle Media Partners

28/04/16 8:35 AM