After what has been a difficult 12 months for the global economy, Western Australia is looking ahead to a wealth of waste potential, following the announcement that a $70m fund has been made available to turbocharge the recycling boom.
News broke from the National and State governments at the start of February, when the Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley, Assistant Minister for Waste Reduction and Environmental Management Trevor Evans, and WA Minister for the Environment Stephen Dawson, pledged the eight-figure support.
And reports suggest the investment – which will focus on driving transformational change – should go on to fuel more than $174m of recycling success across Western Australia.
An interesting article in Tyre & Rubber Recycling drew particular attention to the innovations being seen in the processing and recovery of plastic and rubber.
“End-of-life tyres have long been considered a notoriously difficult material stream to handle, for example, because of their bulky, complex construct,” explained FOCUS Enviro’s Ryan McParland. “The shredding of tyres is also known to cause high wear and be fraught with downtime, so is therefore perceived as uneconomical.
“But this means a valuable resource therefore ends up in landfill – or worse still, illegally dumped – instead of being recycled for remanufacturing or transformed into a TDF (Tyre Derived Fuel) product for energy recovery. This has to change.”
The great thing is that FOCUS already has the technology to make this happen, and the hope now is that this multi-million-dollar fund will make more projects in Western Australian, possible.
“For years we watched, from a distance, as UNTHA’s shredding technology revolutionised the environmental sector in Europe,” continued Ryan. “But behind the scenes we were working hard to bring their world-class shredders to Australia, and in 2019, we made this happen.
“Our collaboration has already made a difference to a number of operators, processing multiple waste streams across Australia. But we’re just getting started!”
To help businesses maximise their resource potential – whether they’re handling anything from plastics to SRF – FOCUS Enviro is currently offering free waste audits.