A TWO-year process by Logan City Council to find ways to better manage local waste may be about to become a whole lot more urgent – and it’s calling in the big guns to help.
Last week, council moved to call on higher authorities – the Local Government Association of Queensland to fight for funding, and state and federal agencies to come good with money to pay for its preferred solutions.
Logan has for the past two years teamed with Ipswich, Redland and Lockyer Valley councils in an effort to find ways to combat the growing amount of waste being dumped into landfill.
The alliance has also been looking for organisations interested in bringing innovative solutions into local areas.
Logan City Council has been the lead agency on the project, and took a shortlist of solutions into confidential discussions at last week’s council meetings.
In the same week, the state government in tandem with federal authorities, announced an $80 million investment to “scale up, transform, and grow the state’s waste and recycling industries”.
Both tiers of government would invest $20 million into a Recycling Modernisation Fund. Industries would match the funding.
Applications for money would close September 7.
Logan has been a frontrunner in the recycling and waste management race, particularly via an Australia-first project to turn the city’s sewage sludge into fertiliser pellets, otherwise known as biochar.
The latest round of funding however, has become a race against the clock to convince other innovators in the industry to station operations locally.
Federal Enviornment Minister Sussan Ley said the fund would lead to more unprocessed waste materials being recycled every year in Queensland and made into new products, following Australia’s ban on exporting waste plastic, paper, glass and tyres overseas.
Deputy Premier Steven Miles said the fund would look at new high-tech equipment to sort, process and remanufacture each of the materials banned for export.
“We want to continue to sustainably grow the resource recovery industry through this new Fund and increase capacity to process additional waste, deliver environmental and community benefits and create new jobs, particularly in regional areas,” he said.
“We want to make Queensland a world leader in recovery and recycling projects.”
The mission is to reduce landfill, a problem which is facing all rapidly-growing councils – hence the alliance which Logan has been leading, focusing on “feasible and progressive methods” of resource recovery and waste disposal.
“Our waste is a valuable product, not a problem that needs to be solved or put into landfill and forgotten. We must use it to create jobs, spark innovation, and deliver strong environmental outcomes,” the state government says.
Those outcomes will be a competitive process, and could be dispersed across the state.
An expression of interest process has been ongoing for some time, and is just now coming to a head.
“A number of potential solution types were shortlisted for evaluation to determine whether they would meet a suite of acceptable operating parameters to warrant progression to a subsequent phase of the procurement process,” a council spokesperson said.
These are the project that were taken into confidential sessions.
Similarly, a South East Queensland Waste Management Plan has been drafted earlier this year by the South East Queensland Council of Mayors.
This report has recommendations for which it will seek support from the LGAQ. The report has not been made public, again citing commercial in confidence.
The City of Logan has a target to become carbon neutral by the end of 2022.
“Logan City Council has introduced a number of programs in recent years to reduce the organisation’s carbon footprint, increase recycling and boost the use of solar power,” a spokesperson said.
“Council hopes those positive steps inspire individuals, groups and businesses to become leaders in recycling in our region.”
