Revisiting Rubbish

My obsession with trash continues. And no, I don’t mean 80s music (although I’m keen on that too), I mean actual trash.

Following on from my visit to the Tamala Park landfill, I was recently treated to a tour of the neighbouring Balcatta Recycling Centre. My guide was the charming and knowledgeable Judy Scott, who is the Waste Project Officer with the City of Stirling.

Balcatta is what’s known as a transfer station. It receives waste from council collections, residents and visitors, and to the extent possible, sorts the rubbish into categories – hazardous waste, green waste, asbestos, e-waste, building rubble, other recyclables, and so on. And then the waste is transferred to its ultimate destination — recycling plant or landfill.

And it is a fascinating place. The City of Stirling, which operates most of the facility, does an admirable job of reducing waste sent to landfill. In fact, they are trailblazers and are the most successful government recycler with nearly 70% of household waste recycled. They are even more obsessed by trash than me!

The Secrets to Recycling Success

How do they achieve such impressive stats? In part, by making it really easy. In 2001, Stirling introduced single bin recycling. This means all household waste goes into one wheelie bin – no sorting. The magic then happens at the state-of-the-art Atlas Materials Recovery Facility in Noranda.

All domestic rubbish is delivered to the Atlas plant, where hazardous waste and other non-recyclable materials are first pulled out. Then, intact glass is separated. The remaining waste is sent through a series of tumblers, which sifts the organic waste out so it can be turned into agricultural compost. The tumblers also clean the recyclable material (such as plastic containers) and remove labels. An electromagnet pulls out steel. The remaining plastic and aluminium are separated out for recycling. And what’s left – which isn’t much – gets compressed, bailed up, and sent to landfill. The process takes a little over an hour. Wow.

It’s Worth the Trip

The Balcatta facility also provides recycling facilities for nearly everything imaginable that can’t go in your wheelie bin. Anyone (whether or not you’re a City of Stirling resident) can drop off rubbish, a great deal of which gets recycled.

There are collection points for almost everything you can think of, including gas bottles, batteries, used oil, white goods, bricks, paint (as much as 5 pallets in one weekend!), garden waste, furniture, cardboard, and the fastest growing type of waste: e-waste.

E-waste – unwanted electronics such as computers and TVs – is growing at over three times the rate of general municipal waste in Australia. Because e-waste contains toxic and hazardous substances such as heavy metals, it’s incredibly important that it’s recycled safely and not sent to landfill. At Balcatta, they collect six to eight tonnes of e-waste per week!

Mountains of e-waste awaiting recycling

So please, when you have rubbish that doesn’t go in your wheelie bin, take it to Balcatta or take the time to check with your local council to find your nearest recycling point. Also check PlanetArk’s Recycling Near You website for details of where you can recycle different types of rubbish.

Sleep Easier

Credit also goes to Judy and her team for starting a mattress recycling program at Balcatta. I personally can’t bear the thought of huge mattresses being tipped into landfill. Instead, for $15 each, drop off your unwanted mattresses and it will be recycled into things like flooring underlay, particleboard and animal beds. It’s been a huge success so far – the picture here shows four days’ worth of mattresses!

Judy with four days' worth of mattresses

My kudos go to Judy and her colleagues at City of Stirling as they tirelessly work to reduce the amount of rubbish that goes to landfill and educate us all about how to reduce the amount of waste we create in the first place. Other councils and regions are doing great things too.

My obsession with trash will continue. The more I see these facilities first-hand, the more horrified I become at the amount of rubbish we create. But then I am immensely cheered when I see technologies like the Atlas plant working so effectively – one green step at a time!

Had to include this for irony's sake - the "go green" magazine that's destined for landfill