By Di Stanley, Emerald Today
There’s not a moment to waste as the Central Highlands council looks to lighten the load on its landfills and create recycling partnerships.
Acting Environment and Waste Coordinator Kate Isles said an expression of interest was active to test the market and see what materials and recyclables would be of interest to community or corporate entities in “a really exciting part of our waste management journey”.
All local governments are required to contribute to the Queensland Waste Management Strategy targets for 2050, including a 25 per cent reduction in household waste, 90 per cent of waste to be recovered and not consigned to landfill and 75 per cent recycling rates across all waste types.
“At present, and based on our forecasting, our council, like many councils, will not achieve or even come close to these targets,” Ms Isles said.
“We present to council an opportunity for our council to contribute to its own resource recycling and recovery, in particular our diversion away from landfills.”
Currently, more than 50,000 tonnes of material a year finds its way to the council’s three landfills.
Ms Isles said the campaign’s focus would be broad – locally, regionally, nationally, even internationally.
“We’ve had people knocking at our door around certain aspects of whether that be tyres or green waste, so we’ve already collated a list of those we will be sending tout to as well,” she said.
Among the other identified reuse or recyclable opportunities are food organics and garden organics (FOGO), comingled recyclables, glass, timbers, rubble, whitegoods, oils and mattresses – all of which could play their part in developing a circular economy.
The council has previously engaged with scrap metal contractors.
“We’re really excited by seeing who may respond and what some of the suggestions might be,” Ms Isles said.
“Everything from the TVs we collect to the e-waste, all the way through, particularly batteries.
“People are finding new and exciting ways to reuse batteries, so we’re really hopeful we may get things that we hadn’t even thought of and that’s why I think an expression of interest is a great way of seeing what is out there.
“I would like to hopefully see some of the community members who may have an idea that could come through this expression of interest process.”
Ms Isles said it was possible the council could enter into multiple contracts.
“Out of this process, we could have 20 different arrangements 20 different people,“ she said.
“For example, tyres, we know that there is a local tyre business that spends about $15,000 a month in trucking their tyres down to Brisbane and there may be an opportunity for them to do something more locally.“
Ms Isles said at least 20 per cent of our red top bins contain FOGO.
Cr Gai Sypher pointed to Capella State School as a shining example of creating its own circular economy through recycling.
“They have a little system where everyone brings in their scraps and they have worm farms and compost and the kids learn all about that,” she said.
“They grow their own veggies at school and sell them at the markets.
“You can actually work with schools. I don’t think this has to be a cost to council at all.
“You may not get 100 per cent of the food scraps… being kept out of landfill but you can actually educate people to do things themselves.
“It’s not always about council having to do everything.”
Cr Janice Moriarty urged the Environment and Waste division to consider taking the community on its waste management journey.
“It doesn’t need to be a big set of indicators… we’re helping community come on this process,” she said.
“This journey, it’s a whole-of-community solution and we want everybody to be all working together, the council’s only part of that.
“So, we really do need to be communicating and be able to celebrate some of our successes and keep encouraging people on the journey and what that means.”
The expression of interest, closing 30 May, will pave the way for a three-stage process with a request for proposals followed by a tender process in the marketplace.