The same week that regional councils were sent into a spin about where to send their recyclables, the giant Ballarat Swap Meet took over the north-west of the city, providing a chance to reuse and recycle all sorts of things, while during the week, the Australian Waste to Energy Forum discussed everything that couldn’t be recycled.
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Waste to energy means a lot of different things, from old-fashioned incinerators to high-tech plasma gasification plants which promise no emissions and leave nothing but useful material.
While there was certainly a focus on municipal waste - the City of Ballarat is pursuing a massive plant at the Ballarat West Employment Zone, modelled on a cutting-edge plant in Copehagen, for its waste - other systems, such as anaerobic digestion on farms and turning crop waste into diesel, were also on the agenda.
It’s also a good networking opportunity, with organisers encouraging councils to get in touch with insurers, shredders, balers, and companies getting projects off the ground in Australia.
The Australian Paper factory, in the Latrobe Valley, is on track to get its waste to energy facility up and running within the next five years.
General manager for corporate development David Jettner said the company was now trying to secure contracts for the waste before construction begins.
We need to stop relying on the rest of the world and start doing things ourselves
- Regroup's Allard Bernhofen
“We need to secure sufficient volume through council contracts to get to the right scale to be competitive with landfill,” he said.
“Landfill’s very cheap, and small energy from waste plants will struggle to be cost competitive with landfills - unless we can present to councils a viable, cost-effective solution, then I think it’s unlikely that smaller-type projects will get off the ground.”
He advised councils to “invest the time up front” to research exactly what a community needed before committing to a project.
Conference chairman Barry Sullivan, an expert consultant in the field, agreed.
“Every year we get the experts here (at the conference), there’s a lot of expertise in the area,” he said.
“We’re successful with industry, we’re successful with technology, so I think the next phase will be the councils - it’s an educational process.”
Smaller councils have already been affected by restrictions where they can send recyclables, and discussions on alternative solutions are getting louder.
Regroup is a company that recovers material before it gets to landfill, and tries to find a home for it, and sales and business development manager Allard Bernhofen said the global recycling crisis was beginning to bit.
“We need to stop relying on the rest of the world and start doing things ourselves, creating opportunities internally,” he said.
“It emphasises the need for secondary processing in Australia for a range of waste commodities.
“(In terms of waste to energy) I think the benefit that Victoria has is the fact that its population density - it’s a smaller state - and you have the tyranny of distance, and there are parts of the puzzle that make either waste to energy or other forms of sorting more viable.”
The broad range of speakers was interesting as well - an update on an anaerobic digestion demonstration farm near Learmonth was followed by a plasma gasification expert from Spain, for example.
For some, it was a chance to explain what they were all about - AgBioEn’s Charles Hunting said his company, which was exploring turning crop waste into fuel, was viable and ready to begin - there’s potential for a regional centre to get involved in creating diesel for transport.
“We’re cornerstoning a project that will start here in Victoria but go nation-wide, for the production of renewable fuels,” he said.
“We’re using a byproduct from the agricultural industry, biomass - a lot of it is burnt around the country, not so much in Victoria, some has been used as a result of the drought as a stockfeed, but by and large it’s a waste product.”
BMH Technology’s Jim Duncan was showing off the Tyrannosaurus system.
“The Finns have a really good sense of humour - they branded this shredding system the Tyrannosaurus because of its sheer size and the aggressive way it processes material,” he said, adding he found the conference rewarding.
“There’s a high level of interest in terms of the waste to energy systems and processes, and in the last 18 months that there’s been a renewed interest in how we can process materials and utilise these materials as a high-quality fuel,” he said.
“I think there has to be a closer look at how we could utilise these stockpiled materials in a safe and effective manner.”
READ MORE: Ballarat's Waste to Energy Forum underway
Mr Sullivan said he was keen to return to Ballarat - not only is it forming a reputation as the home of renewables in Victoria, but holding a conference here has other advantages.
“A lot of these forums are held in bigger cities, and what happens is if there's not a function immediately following the program, you lose people, and because we stay in Ballarat, people stay and come out each evening, with sponsored events - the common element was people saying what a great networking capability it is,” he explained.
“We mix it up, we’re fortunate to have the chair of the EPA on the first day, and we had a significant international presence.”
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