With millions of tonnes of waste being sent to landfill each year, local governments across the country are searching for sustainable solutions to decrease the growing piles.
The National Waste Report 2024 found over nine million tonnes of commercial and industrial waste was sent to landfill in Australia in the 2022/23 financial year, a number which will be causing concern for councils across the country in the face of a growing focus on sustainability.
ResourceCo’s landfill diversion and energy recovery services are playing a major part in assisting significant change for local governments across multiple states.
South-east Queensland recently received a major boost to its landfill diversion and energy recovery capacity, with the opening of ResourceCo’s new waste-to-fuel facility in Hemmant, Brisbane.
A state-first waste facility
ResourceCo’s Energy CEO, Henry Anning, said the opening of the Hemmant facility was the culmination of a seven-year journey and was supported with funding from the Queensland Government’s Resource Recovery Industry Development Program.
“Queensland has the second lowest resource recovery rate in the country, ahead only of the Northern Territory,” Anning said.
“What that means is there’s a lot of waste still going to landfill in Queensland, and that was an opportunity, from an investment perspective, to invest in this sort of asset. It was around that time that Queensland introduced a landfill levy, which was another major factor in us deciding to undertake this project.
“We already had our facility in Adelaide, and then one opening in Sydney at the time, so for us, we were looking at ‘where should we build the next one?’ and South-east Queensland was a logical location.”
Anning explained that the facility is the first of its kind in Queensland and can divert 250,000 tonnes of waste away from landfill annually.
“All of our incoming waste would otherwise go to landfill. That’s what we target as feedstock,” Anning said.
“We achieve about a 95 per cent diversion rate from landfill. So, a pretty impressive number. Overall, investment in this facility is north of $70 million.
“This facility allows a whole range of councils, businesses and developments around Brisbane to achieve landfill diversion targets that weren’t previously possible.”
Putting waste to work
ResourceCo’s energy business focuses primarily on recycling dry, commercial, industrial and construction-demolition waste, as well as the dry parts of household waste.
“This is typically hard rubbish collection, where there’s a lot of furniture and old timber and materials like that in the collection. It’s usually the councils that do that, and today, most of that all goes to landfill, but thanks to our facilities it can be taken and turned into alternative fuel. The other source is dry C&I and C&D waste from council owned waste facilities,” Anning said.
He explained that the energy recovery process begins when ResourceCo’s partners, councils and other waste collection companies deliver their dry waste to the facility in bulk trucks.
“The material is unloaded at our facilities and then goes through a sorting process. We pick out anything that we don’t want to put through the plant, or anything that we can easily recycle. The remaining material is then loaded into a pre shredder that cuts the material down to an ideal size,” Anning said.
“Then, as material goes through the plant, there’s about 15 key pieces of machinery and equipment that effectively ‘unscramble the egg’ and separate the waste out into different materials.
“We have magnets, size-based separation, density based air separators, ballistic separators to sort 2D or 3D items, optical sorters, and picking stations. We then have what we call secondary shredding, where the material is cut down to the size of the final product, which is Process Engineered Fuel [PEF].”
ResourceCo’s PEF has a lower emissions profile and is used to displace the use of fossil fuels that would otherwise be used to heat cement kilns.
“Every tonne of waste we divert from landfill saves, on average, one tonne of CO₂, due to the methane that’s prevented from being released, had that waste gone to landfill,” Anning said.
“Additionally, every tonne of the fuel that we produce replaces enough coal to save approximately one tonne of CO₂ as well. So, there’s significant carbon savings.
“Each of our facilities [located near Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane] receive material from far afield. For example, at our Brisbane facility, we’re receiving material at the moment all the way from the Sunshine Coast, down to the Gold Coast, out west to Ipswich and everywhere in between. We’ve also had inquiries from others about specific materials all the way from Bundaberg and Stanthorpe, so our customer base is fairly wide.”
A trusted partner for local government
ResourceCo now has three energy recovery facilities across Australia, with the first developed in Adelaide over 15 years ago as a joint venture with Veolia.
With close to two decades of experience operating advanced energy recovery facilities under its belt, ResourceCo is a reliable partner for local governments navigating the modern waste management landscape.
“Mandatory climate-related reporting is upon us and business, councils and communities are increasingly aware of their greenhouse gas emissions. Facilities like this will help businesses and councils reduce their Scope Three emissions,” Anning said.
“In Queensland and other places around Australia, there’s the opportunity for a lot more of these facilities.
“It is a matter of getting all of the policy settings right to allow us and others to invest in a whole range of resource recovery facilities.”
To find out more about ResourceCo and its waste management solutions, visit resourceco.com.au/what-we-do/energy
