They say that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. It’s this concept which has driven the creation of waste management solutions provider Global Renewables. However, when you wander through its mammoth waste recovery and recycling facility at Eastern Creek in western Sydney, it’s hard to believe the truckloads of rubbish, bales of plastic and mounds of organic waste which surround the site are going to be much value to anyone.

Nevertheless, Brad Rogers, who is Global Renewables’ Manager of Development, Australasia, says that finding markets for recycled and treated waste is a vital part of the process. “We’re creating markets and downstream recycling opportunities,” says Rogers. “This is the first facility of its type in the world.”

Global Renewables, a fully-owned subsidiary of engineering and development firm GRD Limited, calls its waste management innovation the UR-3R Process, which stands for Urban Resource – Reduction, Recovery and Recycling. It currently handles around 11% of Sydney’s putrescible waste – the “leftover” rubbish. This translates into the traditionally “non-recyclable” waste from around 500,000 people.This waste typically includes food, dangerous items such as batteries and gas bottles, and the glass, plastic, paper and cans that don’t find their way into recycle bins. In the past, this waste would simply go to landfill.

“Our aim is to divert as much as possible from landfill,” says Rogers. However, this requires a rigorous sorting process that recovers material which is then treated so it is safe for reuse.

This innovative process is the result of GRD’s effort to create a new business stream.With expertise in the mining industry, the company was dependent on the peaks and troughs of the resources sector. According to Rogers, the mining industry was in a slump in the late 1990s so the company directed its engineers towards building a new business around proprietary technology.

“We wanted to build a new business so we weren’t totally exposed to the resources cycle,” says Rogers. “However, we didn’t start with waste in mind. The initial aim was to start a business that would produce a stream of carbon credits which we could then either trade, or use to offset the operations of the gold mine we owned in New Zealand.”

At its core, GRD was a mining company, and Rogers says that mining principles were applied to the development of a waste recovery process. “When you view the mixed waste bin in the same way as an ore body, there are a lot of valuable things in there,” he says. “We had to figure out how to recover those resources on a mass scale, as cleanly and efficiently as possible.”

Following a global search of appropriate technologies, Rogers says that there were many disparate technologies that dealt with specific waste streams, but none which successfully integrated the best available technologies to end up with useful products from a mixed waste stream.

GRD saw there was an opportunity to create this unique process – essentially fitting together the correct pieces of a jigsaw. Global Renewables was then born to do just that with their intellectual property lying not just in the specific technologies – some of which are used under licence – but in how the technologies work together in one holistic process.

How does the UR-3R process work?

Waste is delivered to the facility and undergoes a manual pre-sorting process where people remove obviously dangerous items such as gas bottles and car batteries. The waste then goes through various processes – using magnets, wind sifters, and trommels – in order to extract items such as plastic, glass, paper and metals. Most of these are packaged in bales and go to existing markets for recycling.

What’s left is largely organic waste – such as food scraps and garden waste. “This has been commingled with what’s been in the bins of 500,000 Sydney-siders so it has to get cleaned up and homogenised,” says Rogers.

The reality is that this organic waste still contains bits of plastic, glass, and occasionally the errant battery that has not yet been extracted. Global Renewables NSW Manager John Lawson says you can’t capture 100% of the various items that need to be extracted at the start of the process, and points out there are sometimes multiple extraction points. “But the biggest issue is the batteries,” says Lawson. “About 50% of batteries break in the garbage trucks. The acid dissolves and lead comes out, so we need to deal with that material in order to make sure it’s suitable for its end use.”

The organic material is put through a percolation process – used by Global Renewables under license from a German company. Called ISKA, the process basically separates the organic material into liquids and solids.

The liquid material is channelled into an anaerobic digester containing tiny bugs. “In simple terms, the bugs eat the liquid and fart out methane gas,” says Rogers. “We capture the methane and use it in a generator. So the plant is designed to be self-sufficient. We generate our own electricity and can export enough surplus into the grid to power 2,500 homes.”

Meanwhile, the solid organic material goes into a composting hall where it stays for four weeks while big augurs – equipment that’s like a huge spiral rake – blend the material in order to pasteurise it and eliminate pathogenic microorganisms like salmonella and ecoli. The composting system is licensed technology from a company called SCT in Italy.

At the end of the four weeks, the organic material –which now looks like soil, still peppered with small bits of plastic and glass – is placed on an outdoor maturation bed for a further eight weeks.

At the final stage, the material goes through a refinery to extract the remaining plastic, glass and any other debris. The resulting product is ideal for compost and is currently used for agricultural purposes including tomato farming.

“One of the cool things about this initiative is that it takes urban waste and improves agricultural outcomes,” says Rogers, who also points out that the facility is designed to be adaptable to the needs of different communities. “Waste from people is ever-changing so you need a system that’s adaptable.”

With one of the main objectives being to divert as much as possible from landfill, the challenge for Global Renewables is to find or create markets for the recovered materials that don’t have a ready market. When it first began operations in 2004, film plastic that was recovered, such as supermarket shopping bags and bin liners, still went to landfill simply because no one wanted it.“We thought film plastic would be about 3% of the waste stream, but it turned out to be 9%,” says Lawson.“We just didn’t have a market for it.”

Lawson researched potential opportunities and in August 2006 the recovered film plastic found a recycling home. “The film plastic is flaked and then turned into pellets, which can then be made into products such as irrigation pipes, playground equipment or garden furniture,” says Lawson. “Now we’ve got that, we’ve effectively closed the loop.”

Working in partnership

In Sydney, Global Renewables operates under a public private partnership with WSN Environmental Solutions and involves the councils of Fairfield and Blacktown.

It’s an initiative that has also found appeal on the other side of the world. Global Renewables has been contracted to set up two UR-3R Facilities in Lancashire County in the north west of England, operating in a private finance initiative (similar to a public private partnership) with Lancashire Waste Partnership, involving 15 local councils. The plants will be built in 2007 and Global Renewables expects the Facilities to be operational by 2008.

“The UK is further along in this area,” says Rogers. “It is a signatory to a European Union Protocol which requires that each country divert a certain amount of waste from landfill. And these targets have been disseminated to local councils. If they don’t reach their target by 2010, they will pay a penalty of £150 per tonne.”

This paves the way for a Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme,much like the concept of trading carbon credits. “Those councils that do better than their targets will be able to trade their landfill diversion credits to councils who are missing their targets,” says Rogers. “That becomes another revenue stream for us. Our projections show that the Lancashire operation will beat its target so we will be able to trade the credits to other councils who haven’t been so quick off the mark.”

Revenue and return on investment

While trading landfill credits is a source of revenue (specifically in the UK, but not Australia), income also results from the sale of the recovered material, and in the case of the facility at Eastern Creek, through the sale of carbon credits. The facility is audited and, based on the net effect of its emissions, biogas and other factors, it receives carbon credits which it can then trade. “At Eastern Creek, we have forward sales contracts for the carbon credits with BP Australia and Mitsui,” says Rogers.

However, Rogers emphasises that these revenue streams are not currently a significant part of total income.The facility – Eastern Creek cost about A$100 million – is designed to operate against a contract of 25 years, which guarantees a steady income over that period through charging a gate fee for waste. “The project is typically financed, expecting a return on investment after 10 to 15 years,” he says. “It’s structured this way to afford the government a low enough price for the waste treatment service that we are providing.”

In the future, if one of the revenue streams for the recovered materials unexpectedly increases significantly, profits will be shared between Global Renewables and the government partner.

The local state of waste

The challenges in rolling out innovative waste solution facilities using the UR-3R Process are not related to technology. The physical process clearly works. Rather, the challenges lie with the connection between government environmental strategy and implementation.

“In Australia, typically the responsibility for waste lies with local government,” says Rogers. “We think there needs to be a state government resource recovery authority that takes the responsibility for infrastructure-based waste treatment off local government.“

Local government is still ideal for the collection of waste and education of local ratepayers but they are not usually experienced in procuring large infrastructure solutions. This skill and experience base typically lies with state governments.”

Like other innovations facing a lack of support in Australia, Rogers says that the UR-3R Process may be easier to roll out overseas. “If things don’t change in Australia, then we will concentrate our efforts into markets like the UK. It’s cheaper and more efficient to get a facility going there.”

www.grd.com.au