What a waste: recycling going to landfill

ALL recycling collected from yellow-top bins by Cleanaway is being dumped in landfill after contract negotiations between Cleanaway and another recycling processor stalled.

Cleanaway is contracted to 20 WA councils, including the City of South Perth, City of Swan, City of Bayswater, City of Mandurah, City of Subiaco, Town of Vincent and Town of Victoria Park.

Southern Metropolitan Regional Council (SMRC) had an interim agreement in place to help recycle materials destined for Cleanaway’s facility in South Guildford, which was destroyed by fire in November.

SMRC’s arrangement with Cleanaway came to an end on January 24 and no further contract is in place for future processing of its recyclables at the Regional Resource Recovery Centre facility in Canning Vale.

Town of Victoria Park  chief executive Anthony Vuleta confirmed 100 per cent of residents’ recyclables were going to landfill.

“The advice to our residents is to continue to recycle as normal,” he said. “The Town is in regular contact with Cleanaway for ways to minimise the amount of recyclables going to landfill.”

Mr Vuleta said the Town produced an average of 63 tonnes of recycling each week.

South Perth Mayor Greg Milner said the City and other local governments would meet Cleanaway this week to discuss the matter in detail.

“In the meantime, we strongly encourage our local community to continue being diligent with their recycling to ensure no contamination in their yellow-top bins,” he said.

City of Swan CEO, Mike Foley said following the fire at the Cleanaway facility, the City of Swan immediately diverted its household recycling to the SMRC facility in Canning Vale for processing.

“Since the fire in November, no City of Swan recycling has been sent to landfill and every effort is being made to ensure this continues,” he said.

SMRC chair councillor Doug Thompson said the SMRC had the capacity to receive and process recyclables from individual councils.

He said some councils affected by the Cleanaway fire were now delivering their recyclables directly to the SMRC facility.

“We have been using our best endeavours to process as much of the council collected recycling as possible,” he said.

A spokesman said Cleanaway sought to establish an ongoing arrangement with the SMRC but the two parties had not been able to agree on a commercially viable arrangement.

“In the interim, Cleanaway has an infrastructure plan to provide manual processing solutions, which are expected to become operational between February and May 2020 subject to relevant licensing approvals,” he said.

“The loss of the MRF (materials recovery facility) means there is insufficient capacity within the Perth market for the remaining facilities to process all of Perth’s kerbside recyclables. This inevitably means that an amount will be disposed of at landfill, as alternative options such as stockpiling are not viable due to the risk of fire.”

Joondalup Mayor Albert Jacob said that City had a collection contract in place with Suez to collect contents of its three household bins, including the yellow-lid recycling bin, with that material sent to the Bibra Lake facility.

Mindarie Regional Council education manager Geoff Atkinson said material collected through the recycling centre at Tamala Park was “unaffected by the fire at the Cleanaway facility and goes off for recycling as usual”.

The City of Wanneroo, which had a Cleanaway contract, has not yet confirmed how much of its recycling material was going to landfill.