Recycling Innovation grants awarded and project summaries

In the 2015 round the Environmental Trust approved 20 grants, totalling $6,893,028:

• stream 1 – infrastructure projects – 13 grants totalling $6,404,468
• stream 2 –research and development – 7 grants totalling $488,560.

Organisation	Project title	Amount $
Stream 1: Infrastructure projects
Australian Recycled Rubber	Australian Recycled Rubber Facility	759,215
Bulk Recovery Solutions	Wet concrete washing plant - above ground mining	660,000
Expanded Polymer Solutions Pty Ltd	Expanded Polymer Solutions Expanded Polyethylene recycling project	178,354
GL & JC Pilgrim	Plastic oyster basket recycling project	100,000
Great Lakes Community Resources Inc.	Soft landings - growing end of life mattress recycling for NSW	750,000
Innoveq (Australia) Pty Ltd	Mobile mattress deconstruction and resource recycling unit	385,000
IS Recycling Pty Ltd	Don't bin it, just bring it	384,750
Macleay Options Inc.	Mattress recycling in the Macleay region	106,000
Materials Recovery Management (Aust) Pty Ltd	Wash glass sand project	958,383
Newtecpoly Pty Ltd - Declined Offer of Funding	Newtecpoly plastic waste recycling project	400,000
Plastic Forests Pty Ltd	Albury Resource Recovery and Recycling Facility	800,000
Synthetic Grass & Rubber Surfaces Aust Pty Ltd	On-site Recycling of Outdoor Synthetic Surfaces	128,000
TIC (Mattress) Recycling Pty Ltd	Automated and advanced end-of-life mattress recycling for NSW	794,766
	13 projects totalling	$6,404,468
Stream 2: Research and development
ABRI	New business models for battery recycling	70,000
CRC Care	Clean up toxic metals from CCA treated timber	90,227
Qantas Airways Limited	Qantas Project Mascot	100,000
University of Wollongong	Performance of Rubber-based Energy Absorbing Layer (REAL) for railroad stability	75,000
University of New South Wales	Transforming waste into value-added materials	25,000
Vinyl Council of Australia	Advertising banner reprocessing and design project	68,833
Vinyl Council of Australia	Vinyl commercial flooring - recycling and reprocessing trials	59,500
	7 projects totalling	$488,560
	Grand total	$6,893,028

Australian Recycled Rubber

Australian Recycled Rubber Facility – $759,215

This project will establish a new tyre recycling facility to process car and truck tyres in NSW. Australian Recycled Rubber (ARR) plans to process waste tyres into high quality, uncontaminated crumb rubber and other valuable by-products including steel, rubber chips and rubber granules. These products will be utilised in several industries including the construction and public safety industries. ARR plans to process up to 5 tonnes per hour of tyre waste, potentially diverting up to 19,200 tonnes per annum of waste tyres from landfill and illegal dumping, using Dura-Shred technology. ARR’s first facility will be located in Ingleburn. ARR intends to expand its operations to 3 facilities across Sydney in the future.

Bulk Recovery Solutions

Wet concrete washing plant: above-ground mining – $660,000

This project will establish a wet-concrete processing plant at Ingleburn NSW. The plant will receive wet concrete wastes from both agitators and concrete batching plant washout pits. Specialised reclaimers, screens and washers separate and clean waste concrete, producing high-value clean recovered material in the form of aggregate, sand and cementitious-spadeable fines. All these components are reusable, including the wastewater which is recycled back into the process. The environmentally friendly system addresses issues in disposing of concrete wastes. There are significant concrete industry logistics savings from reduced transport movements and greater batch-plant utilisation.

Expanded Polymer Solutions Pty Ltd

Expanded Polymer Solutions expanded polyethylene recycling project – $178,354

Expanded Polymer Solutions intends to expand its existing expanded polystyrene recycling facility in Milperra by installing a Polystar plastic recycling machine. This machine will enable the company to process approximately 1200 tonnes of expanded polyethylene (EPE) per annum and convert it into recycled Polyethylene pellets that can be utilised for the manufacture of general-purpose polyethylene products. If successful, this would be the first EPE recovery facility in Australia. With no export options available for EPE, all EPE waste currently produced goes to landfill and attracts high landfill fees. This project intends to provide an environmentally friendly and cost-effective alternative to businesses producing EPE as waste.

GL & JC Pilgrim

Plastic oyster basket recycling project – $100,000

The oyster industry has been identified as producing a significant waste stream of decommissioned plastic oyster baskets. The funding will cover 25% of an innovative Australian-first sustainable project solution for waste plastic oyster baskets that are currently being stockpiled or going into landfill nationally. The project will transport a purpose designed shredder to oyster farm sites in NSW, SA and Tasmania and transport the shredded plastic for recycling in Moama NSW. Plastic oyster baskets are large bulky items that require specialist granulation because of stainless-steel clips in the baskets, to create a transportable material that can be floated to remove contaminants and metal and delivered to plastic recyclers for conversion into new products. Water used in the process will be re-used through the flotation/separation process and stainless-steel clips will be recycled.

Great Lakes Community Resources Inc.

Soft landings: growing end-of-life mattress recycling for NSW – $750,000

Soft Landings will establish 1 (Newcastle) and upgrade 2 (Wollongong and Sydney) social-enterprise mattress recycling facilities, to increase mattress diversion from the current model of kerbside pick-up, landfill drop-off and illegal dumping, to include the processing of commercial and industrial mattresses through our recently established voluntary product stewardship scheme, which includes retailers and manufacturers including IKEA, De Rucci and Fantastic Furniture. The project will increase mattress recycling in NSW by an additional 50,000 units in year 1, rising to an additional 200,000 units by year 3. The project will increase recycling by an additional 1600 tonnes in year 1 rising to 6100 tonnes in year 3. The project is an initiative of Resource Recovery Australia, who optimise waste diversion through social enterprise.

Innoveq (Australia) Pty Ltd

Mobile mattress deconstruction and resource recycling unit – $385,000

The project will build a mobile mattress deconstruction unit that uses high pressure water jets to strip the fabric and foam from mattress springs in 60 seconds (average time). The unit will be licensed to an operator. As the unit is mobile it can be moved to where mattresses are stock piled, deconstruct the mattresses and then move on to the next location. Alternatively, it can be used in a fixed location where the mattresses are brought to a central depot for deconstruction. The springs are compressed and recycled and foam/fabric is reused as carpet underlay. This technology, which recycles all the components of a mattress, results in fewer mattresses being dumped into landfill, residential streets, public places or stored in warehouses.

IS Recycling Pty Ltd

Don’t Bin It, Just Bring It – $384,750

IS Recycling will establish a new project called Don’t Bin It, Just Bring It. Funding will be used to purchase 25 additional expanded polystyrene (EPS) recycling machines to be distributed free of charge to 25 selected clients including shopping centres, councils and retailers. The client will use this equipment to process their EPS wastes in-house rather than binning them. This will ultimately reduce their current costs quite significantly through savings on transportation, gate fees, etc. It is expected that the project will generate an additional 20–25 jobs.

Macleay Options Inc.

Mattress recycling in the Macleay region – $106,000

Macleay Options will enhance the safety, efficiencies and diversion outcomes of our mattress processing facility in Kempsey through the construction of a new processing shed, incorporating greater mechanisation of our recycling system. This will ensure a safe work area for our staff, minimise manual handling and provide weather protection for all materials and equipment. We will purchase bailing machines for efficient transport and processing of materials, while continuing to provide employment and training opportunities for people with a disability in the Macleay Valley and surrounding areas including Kempsey.

Materials Recovery Management (Aust) Pty Ltd

Wash glass sand project – $958,383

Glass recovered from recycling will be aggregated at Pile Road Recycling Facility in Somersby, NSW. The glass will be cleaned, crushed into a sub-one-millimetre sand and washed. Technologies have been selected that will reduce the cost of crushing by over 80% and will manufacture a very fine sand that can be used in concrete and concrete block manufacture. The washed sand will be provided to industry to replace natural and manufactured sand. The plant site is well located as it is on the backload route to a large number of quarries and the product can be collected as a back load and blended into sand using existing infrastructure.

Newtecpoly Pty Ltd

Newtecpoly plastic waste recycling project – $400,000

Note: Newtecpoly has declined the offer of funding. The project description is included for information only.

Newtecpoly Pty Ltd is a plastic waste recycling facility based in rural NSW that intends to increase its capacity to process plastic film, bulk bags and co-mingled plastics by installing a PolyWaste melter and ancillary infrastructure. This project would divert 4000 tonnes of problem waste from landfill annually using new technology that significantly reduces the cost of recycling plastic waste and uses only half as much energy as traditional plastic recycling processes. The environmental benefits of recycling 4000 tonnes of mixed plastics equate to savings of 251,920 gigajoules of energy, 45,000 megalitres of water and 55,600 cubic metres of landfill space per annum.

Plastic Forests Pty Ltd

Albury Resource Recovery and Recycling Facility – $800,000

Plastic Forests’ project has 3 key elements: Australia’s first bulk-a-bag recycling facility, which processes 500,000-plus bags per annum, and a garbage-bag production line using pellets derived from an internal process to consolidate contaminated polyethylene (PE) films. By vertically integrating the collection of film, processing and value-adding into garbage bags, Plastic Forests can reduce the cost of recycling for waste generators, divert more waste from landfill, ensure consistent demand for pellets and allow customers to achieve a 360-degree economy.

Synthetic Grass & Rubber Surfaces Aust Pty Ltd

On-site recycling of outdoor synthetic surfaces – $128,000

The company Synthetic Grass and Rubber Surfaces Aust. Pty Ltd (Synthetic Rubber) specialises in the construction of high-quality outdoor synthetic surfaces such as playgrounds and sporting fields. This project is to use a mobile shredding machines to recycle the outdoor rubber surfaces at the time of resurfacing. This provides an economically and environmentally better option to the present solution of disposal as landfill. The anticipated initial annual recycling tonnage is approximately 1500 tonnes, with expected growth within NSW to greater than 5000 tonnes per annum over the next 7 years.

TIC (Mattress) Recycling Pty Ltd

Automated and advanced end-of-life mattress recycling for NSW – $794,766

TIC Mattress Recycling and partners are establishing a state-of-the-art automated mattress recycling facility integrated with a network of metropolitan, rural and regional collection and consolidation points across NSW. The project will increase mattress recycling in NSW by an additional 65,000–85,000 units in year 1 of full operation, rising to an additional 190,000 units by year 4. The project will increase resource recovery and recycling by an additional 1800 tonnes in year 1, rising to about 6000 tonnes in year 4. This innovative automated mattress recycling facility and associated state-wide network of collection sites will complement existing mattress recycling processors, leverage retailer take-back opportunities and ensure a long-term sustainable mattress recycling industry.

ABRI

New business models for battery recycling – $70,000

The project will investigate alternative models for collection and recycling of button-cell batteries. These batteries are a priority because they contain toxic and hazardous materials, contaminate other recovery systems (organics and kerbside packaging) and are a safety hazard for children. Due to limited recycling markets in NSW the recycling rate is less than 3%. The project will trial alternative collection channels and containers for the batteries and will develop and test strategies for longer-term financial sustainability, including support from manufacturers, distributors and consumers. The project has potential for commercial application due to the value of the silver in many button-cell batteries.

CRC CARE

Clean up toxic metals from CCA treated timber – $90,227

The eventual disposal of copper-chrome-arsenic (CCA) treated timber is of great concern to both humans and the environment because of the anticipated large volume of waste and the lack of safe disposal options, given the toxicity of chemicals present in the treated timber. Extraction of CCA components by biological and chemical methods are technically feasible but slow and expensive. More research and development is needed to improve, optimise and evaluate the process. We propose to work with Newcastle City Council to carry out a feasibility study on using environmental-friendly methods to either: (a) immobilise CCA chemicals and convert the CCA-treated timber into safe and reusable mulch; or (b) use a risk based approach for on-site remediation of CCA-treated timber.

Qantas Airways Limited

Qantas Project Mascot – $100,000

Qantas Airways is supporting the diversion of quarantine waste from autoclaving and landfill through developing commercial-scale resource recovery at its existing facilities in Mascot. The project will require the trialling of waste blends, using continuous biomass converter technology developed by The Crucible Group. Energy intensive autoclaving and landfill demand will be eliminated and commercial by-products will be produced. The outcome will be an increase in the low-emission energy-generation capacity at the Qantas Mascot campus via the existing 8.6 megawatt trigeneration plant.

University of Wollongong

Performance of rubber-based energy-absorbing layer (REAL) for railroad stability – $75,000

In the past decade there has been a substantial increase in demand for safe and reliable rail infrastructure to accommodate faster and heavier trains. The major outcome of the project is to identify opportunities to reuse scrap vehicle tyres as a rubber-based energy-absorbing layer (REAL) that can provide an environmentally friendly alternative to traditional capping layer consisting of compacted gravel. The energy imparted to the track by the fast-moving trains is then absorbed by the REAL, thereby preventing the overlying ballast deforming and breaking excessively, while attenuating undue stress propagation of to the underlying soil (subgrade) prevents unacceptable settlement or foundation failure. This study with comprehensive performance monitoring will ensure track stability, safety and operational efficiency.

University of New South Wales

Transforming waste into value-added materials – $25,000

This waste transformation project involves research and study to characterise the household combined metal and plastic waste stream and investigate the possibilities of using high temperature transformation of mixed plastic and metal to produce valuable metallic alloys. The overall aim of the project is to use research findings to divert waste from landfill and produce value-added materials that have broad-reaching regional, economic and environmental benefits. The research required will develop the innovation to a stage where it can be trialled at pilot plants in Australia, the outcome will be value-added metallic alloys that can be used as raw materials across the manufacturing sector.

Vinyl Council of Australia

Advertising banner reprocessing and design project – $68,833

Over 1,200,000 square metres (500 tonnes) of advertising banners go to landfill around Australia each year, alongside 5000 tonnes of grain covers and 400 tonnes of truck tarpaulins. These products are all made from vinyl-coated polyester fabric. This project builds upon a previous research partnership and a collaborative project with Monash University and industry in 2014–2015 that focused on banners as a starting point for reprocessing. This project will move from concepts to trials and verifications in designed and finished products and explore potential reuses.

Vinyl Council of Australia

Vinyl commercial flooring: recycling and reprocessing trials – $59,500

Vinyl flooring is the material of choice in hospitals, schools and retail. Made of vinyl and limestone, it is easy to clean, low-maintenance and durable. But when removed at the end of life, it is contaminated with glue and other residues and is disposed of in landfill. This project focuses on all vinyl sheet and tile flooring in the resilient-flooring market and aims to establish new products and markets for end-of-life material. While companies already collect offcuts, this will be the first project uniting the flooring companies on end of life ‘waste’. It also brings together industry leaders to match and trial the recovered material with a range of end products and markets.