Thursday 17 October 2024
WINNERS ANNOUNCED FOR THE INAUGURAL
2024 AUSTRALIAN RECOURCE RECOVERY AWARDS
The Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia (WMRR) today congratulated the winners of the inaugural 2024 Australian Resource Recovery Awards announced in Adelaide overnight.
“The awards, which are part of the first ever Australian Resource Recovery Conference, recognise and honour those across industry striving to achieve our national 2030 resource recovery targets,” WMRR CEO Gayle Sloan said.
“The waste and resource recovery (WARR) industry is taking the opportunity of recognising those in our own industry leading the way investing heavily, recovering more, extending the life of resources, mitigating carbon and making lasting change for the community, business and the planet all while growing domestic green jobs,” she said.
“Achieving the 80% resource recovery target requires significant local investment and a massive commitment to buying back what our essential industry manufactures. To do this we need support across the entire value chain to ensure that our industry can compete on a level platform with virgin materials.
“We have a long way to go, but as peers we have celebrated those doing just that to make the future a reality. Our winners are playing their part in this challenge and inspiring others to drive positive change.
“We thank all those who nominated facilities and projects for the awards. The judges were impressed by the variety and impact of the nominees and the ingenuity demonstrated to increase resource recovery.”
The winners of the 2024 Australian Resource Recovery Awards are:
Resource Recovery Facility Award – Re.Cycle for the Sunshine Coast Material Recovery Facility
Resource Recovery Innovation (or Project) Award – Port Pirie Regional Council for its Weekly FOGO Transition
Further detail on each winner is below.
Resource Recovery Facility Award – Re.Cycle for the Sunshine Coast Material Recovery Facility
Re.Cycle is a partnership between Re.Group and Sunshine Coast Council to run Australia’s newest and most technically advanced material recovery facility. Opened in December 2023, it takes material from nine (9) council areas and can process up to 250 tonnes of yellow bin co-mingled material a day across ten material streams. Fitted with world leading fire detection and suppression technology, it is achieving market-leading purity levels for plastic sorting of up to 98%.
Resource Recovery Innovation (or Project) Award – Port Pirie Regional Council Weekly FOGO Transition
Port Pirie Regional Council, more than 200km north of Adelaide, has only 17,000 residents. It has successfully transitioned to a weekly FOGO service seeing its kerbside diversion rate jump from an average of 46% to 67%, as well as a fall in landfill volumes by 38%. The introduction of FOGO has shown regional councils and lower socio-economic communities can achieve high performing kerbside services that strongly contribute to cost effective resource recovery. It has provided a pathway for other councils to follow.