Waste is a growing problem around the world. Regardless of the source – households, commercial businesses or industry – waste, when it’s not recycled, usually ends up in landfill. And landfill, as a waste management solution, is anything but sustainable or environment-friendly.

To address the problem of waste in Australia, the Australian Government, together with the state and territory governments, created the National Waste Policy in 2018 to provide a framework for collective, national action on waste management, recycling and resource recovery to 2030. Central to the policy and the subsequent action plan of 2019 was to consider waste as a resource, and apply “principles of a circular economy to waste management to support better and repeated use of our resources”.

Key circular economy principles for waste specified in the policy included avoiding waste, improving resource recovery, increasing use of recycled material and building demand and markets for recycled products, better managing material flows to benefit human health, the environment and the economy, and improving information to support innovation, guide investment and enable informed consumer decisions.

The document also identified important national targets to be achieved by 2030, including reducing total waste generated in Australia by 10% per person; achieving 80% average resource recovery rate from all waste streams; increasing the use of recycled content by governments and industry; and halving the amount of organic waste sent to landfill.

However, the National Waste Report of 2022, which detailed the progress made on the identified targets – measured against 2016-17 baselines – showed a 3% increase in per capita waste generation with 2.95 tonnes per person, and a 63% average resource recovery rate against the targeted 80%, achieving only a 2% increase. While there has been an increase of 15% in the use of recycled content by governments and industry, more than 23,000 metric tonnes of waste went into landfill.

Australia needs to build a more sustainable waste management system focused on recovery, especially for non-recyclables, to achieve the 2030 targets. Energy recovery facilities (ERFs) are showing the way forward for sustainable management of non-recyclable waste by recovering energy from these materials that would otherwise be discarded in landfill.

Energy from Waste (EfW) employs a proven technology to convert waste into heat and electricity. Conventionally, heat generated by burning fossil fuels produces steam, which is used to power a turbine to produce electricity. In the EfW process, the coal or gas is replaced by non-recyclable waste materials as the fuel source. In fact, 3 tonnes of non-recyclable waste can generate the same amount of electricity produced by burning 1 tonne of coal. Additionally, EfW not only reduces the amount of non-recyclable waste being sent to landfill but also cuts carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

There’s more. EfW also recovers non-combustible material, which can be recycled into aggregates for use in the construction industry; and ferrous and non-ferrous metals, which are collected and recycled.

Veolia, which operates over 65 energy recovery facilities globally, is leading the push for energy generation from waste in Australia. The company is involved in at least five EfW projects in Western Australia, NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

The new ACCIONA waste to energy facility, which recently opened in Kwinana, WA, is the first of its kind in Australia. The ERF will generate more than 38MW of electricity, sufficient to power 55,000 homes, divert up to 460,000 tonnes of waste from landfill, and reduce CO2 emissions equivalent to taking 85,000 cars off Perth's roads. With costs similar to conventional landfill methods, local governments will find ERFs to be a cost-effective waste management alternative – with additional environmental benefits.

Veolia’s proposed Advanced Energy Recovery Centre (ARC) in Woodlawn, NSW will produce enough electricity to power 40,000 homes every year from up to 380,000 tonnes of unrecyclable waste otherwise destined for the landfill. When complete, the $600 million ARC will be Australia’s biggest EfW facility.

Yet another ERF project where Veolia is involved as an operational and maintenance partner is the $511 million East Rockingham Resource Recovery Facility located in Perth. The EfW plant will generate enough energy by treating 300,000 tonnes of waste to power over 36,000 homes.

Monetising waste through ERFs not only solves the environmental problem of landfills but also creates employment opportunities. According to the National Waste Policy document, recycling 10,000 tonnes of waste creates 9.2 jobs, and the sale of recovered materials generates $2.9 billion each year.

By considering waste as a resource of value rather than something to be mindlessly discarded in landfill, Australia can sustainably overcome the growing challenges of waste management, carbon emissions and environmental pollution.

Image: Kwinana Waste to Energy plant (Source: https://www.kwinana.wa.gov.au/wastetoenergy)

Branko Miletic

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