LAWMAC Secretary: Mary Field - PO Box 348 Edmonton Qld 4869 mobile: 0417 730 139 email: [email protected] web: www.lawmac.org.au
Issue: Feb 2020
Cassowary Coast Regional Council
TULLY LEACHATE CONTAINMENT
Councils Waste Services and Water and Sewerage Maintenance staff in conjunction with local contractor In Electrics have recently finalised installation and operation of upgrades to the Tully landfill leachate containment system. Power has been provided to the site and new pumps, pipes, fittings, probes, flow meters, switch & control boards installed to enable better operations, monitoring and distribution of leachate.Leachate is the by product (or juice) from waste materials breaking down within the landfill. Council has stringent environmental obligations to minimise quantity and quality of this, prevent it mixing with stormwater and contain it onsite as it is harmful to the environment. These facility upgrades will assist
Council hugely to maintain site operations in accordance with Dept of environment licence conditions, a task not easily met in the wettest and most challenging environment nationally to run a landfill.
Cassowary Coast Regional Councils Manager of Regulatory Services Gavin Hammond extended appreciation for works undertaken also to Councils Water & Mechanical Maintenance fitters Kyle Bennett, Danny Burns, Dylan Norman & Andrew Salleras and is keen to use articles like this internally to demonstrate cross departmental working and building on the culture we are aiming for in the Cassowary Coast.
Pictured from L-R are John Hutchinson Waste Services Officer, David Brandt In Electrics, Ross Hay CCRC Supervisor of Water and Mechanical Maintenance, and Trevor Brooks Tully waste facility operator from Mams.
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Issue: FEB 2020
Also in this edition:Cassowary Coast Regional Council 1 TULLY LEACHATE CONTAINMENT 1 Rockhampton Regional Council 2 RURAL WASTE TRANSFER STATIONS COMPLETE 2 EXPANSION OF WASTE COLLECTION SERVICES
TO RURAL AREAS 3
COMMON GOALS FOR DAY LABOUR AND CONTRACT WASTE COLLECTION SERVICES 4
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL 6
Cairns Regional Council 7
CONCRETE STORY 7
Rockhampton Regional Council
RURAL WASTE TRANSFER STATIONS COMPLETE
Pictured Ribbon Cutting - Councillor Neil Fisher and Councillor Sheree Rutherford with School Leaders at Bushley Waste Transfer Station
The final rural Waste Transfer Station, in the strategic plan to replace numerous unmanned rural
roadside bin stations was complete at Bushley in the Rockhampton Region with the opening of the new facility to the public on 10 December 2019 by local school captains and Councillors. The facility is operating as designed and planned with good community feedback received.
So far, 45% of customers at the new rural Waste Transfer Station are non-paying due to the recycling service that we offer at no charge.
The uptake by the rural community and quality of commingled recyclables received has been pleasing and to assist customers wheelie bins have been placed adjacent to each commingled recycling bin to assist with the disposal of non-recyclable items.
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Issue: FEB 2020
EXPANSION OF WASTE
COLLECTION SERVICES TO RURAL
AREAS
In the last 2 years Rockhampton Regional Council has undertaken a strategy to eliminate unmanned road side bin stations and replace them with transfer stations. To compliment this approach waste collection services are being offered to rural residential areas not previously serviced.
Public interest resulted in waste officers seeking Council approval to systematically investigate expanding services to a number of rural residential areas. The challenge for waste officers is to ensure the economic viability of any such expansion. As a “rule of thumb” one kilometre is used as the maximum distance between collections to ensure economic viability.
Council identified a number of key rural residential areas and maps were produced identifying properties within a one kilometre radius of a township. Based on the number of potential services a ranking was provided to determine the order of investigation.
Services are now being rolled out to areas not previously serviced and although the initial uptake in localities is considered marginal additional services are coming on line as residents realise that the kerbside collection service is an economical and efficient way to responsibly manage waste.
Additionally, Council’s rate base for services is slowly growing without a need to increase the fleet as trucks are collecting in proximity to these areas
Bin delivery in a rural residential area. House numbers and information packs provided on bins
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Issue: FEB 2020
COMMON GOALS FOR DAY LABOUR AND CONTRACT WASTE COLLECTION
SERVICES
Rockhampton Regional Council conducts waste collection services by a day labour workforce, a service that Council prides itself on. Recycling collections are performed by a Contractor and this option was selected a number of years ago due to expediency in the roll out of the service.
Council business improvement strategies in waste collections have flowed through to recycling collections and Council’s Contractor has complimented Council on its pro-activeness which has assisted in the efficiency and safety of recycling collection services. This approach has seen a reduction in the number of incidents that result in property damage. In particular, there is a reduction in officer time in the logging and addressing incidents. A summary of these initiatives:
Improvement Strategy Concern Outcome
Bin Placement in narrow laneways Trucks are required to travel up and down narrow
laneways.
Potential for property damage as bins are places up against fences.
Bin placed to one side of laneway. More room for collection vehicles with savings in travel time and reduction in number of reported damages.
Bin Positioning in Cul-de-Sacs and
Courts Waste collection vehicles struggling to navigate cul-de-sacs due to vehicle
obstructions, potential damage to parked vehicles, letter boxes, driveways, stormwater pipes and road pavement.
Letter to residents in tight or problem cul-de-sacs, requiring bin positioning on straight area before entry into cul-de-sac.
This has delivered improved collection efficiency and safety.
Some residents expressed concern about change, however, a site visit resolved concerns.
Bin Placements Bins are too close to each other or to an obstruction. This requires driver to hop out of the vehicle and move bin, if bin is accidently knocked over there is a need to pick up bin and spilt contents, property and vehicle damage.
Embossing of waste bin showing required bin placement distances. Promotes safe and efficient service.
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Issue: FEB 2020
Assisted Services Upon application and meeting criteria Council provides an assisted service. In the past limited consideration was given to bin position and safety of operator when servicing a property
Assessment Criteria introduced prior to
commencement of assisted services, based on the following;
Bins are located near or as close as possible to the entry of the property. The maximum distance should not exceed 20 metres from the entry point or front gate and should be within reach of a pathway or driveway;
Any entry, pathway and/or driveway does not pose a risk of a slip, trip or fall;
Driveways are not overly steep;
Animals are restrained; Properties are not overgrown and are litter free;
Bins are not secured by rope or other means;
Gates and fences are of sound standard and operational; There are no height restrictions, and
Bins are not excessively heavy or overweight. Please avoid placement of garden clippings and mulch where possible.
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Issue: FEB 2020
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
submitted by George Meacham Ernie was famously once the fastest milkman in the west, but by the early 1990s his career was over, retired along with the hundreds of electric milk floats rusting away in paddocks all over England. Then two young entrepreneurs, Joe and James had an idea. For just one pound per week, they would collect recycling from householders’ doorsteps. The householder would be issued with a green box that they would put on their doorstep on their designated day. The box would take cans, tin foil, plastic containers, paper, cardboard and glass bottles. Joe and James would rescue and refurbish one of those rusty old electric milk floats, strap half a dozen wheelie bins into a Luton back, and their first electric collection vehicle was born.
I was to become the first full time employee of the Magpie Cooperative Green Box scheme. I spent my days running the streets of Brighton, playing tag team with my co-collector to alternately retrieve the box, jump into the back of the float, hand sort the recyclables into the bins, return the box
to the
doorstep, drive the float forward 20 yards, and back through the cycle again. Each shift ended when the recyclables had been handballed into skips and containers, ready for on-sale.
Within a year, there were so many customers; a second electric milk cart was added to the fleet. This time, we employed our own in-house engineer to design it with purpose built stillages of steel and weld. Heath Robinson it may have been, but it was beautifully designed. The paper and card now went into giant builders’ sacks featuring an ingenious draw string design which could now lifted off the float at the end of the shift by our beaten up, second-hand farm tractor and dropped straight into the open top container.
Soon enough I was a team leader with staff to manage. Shoes were so worn out from the running, we issued each employee with a PPE allowance, seventy five pounds every six months to buy only the lasts in Nike Airs or whichever were the latest fancy, but how good we looked.
Then we added another cart, and then another, we had two fabrication mechanics in the workshop now, 5000+ customers, a team of collectors, customer service staff in the office. And with a ready supply of customers, we started selling recycled products and refill bottles for detergents and food items. The possibilities were endless.
And all this was run by a worker owned cooperative. We ran the streets, but we run the company as well. Kate did sales, Joe “managed” the Council, Paddy sold the product, James screen printed boxes, George did the books and Rob was our resident DJ.
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Issue: FEB 2020
We were famous in our town, people knew us from our vehicles, from running the streets, for providing a service that Council had failed to for far too long. And all those colleagues, they are still amongst my closest friends to this day.
But what really is my point? Well we never spoke of contamination rates in those days for a start. We hand sorted glass by colour as we went, local artists would be out bidding each other to purchase our blue glass, paper value was always high because it was clean, and plastics were hand separated by Peter and John, our resident Asperger’s yard hands drive by a need for perfection. But more
importantly, by being small, by being agile before that was even a thing, by being of the community, we brought a whole city with us on a journey. When it comes to effecting change, more often than not, small really is beautiful.
Cairns Regional Council
CONCRETE STORY
Did you know that Australia creates more than 20 million tonnes of construction and demolition (C&D) waste every year?
C&D Waste is made up of asphalt, sand, rubble, plasterboard and large quantities of concrete with much of this material being sent to landfill across the country. According to the most recent QLD recycling waste report, as much as 2,592,287 tonnes of C&D waste was disposed of 2018, with 1.8 million tonnes of the concrete component recovered for reuse projects across our state. So how exactly can concrete be recovered and reused?
Surprisingly recovery of concrete is quite simple. Firstly, confirming the source and type of the concrete, making sure it's not contaminated is the
most important step. From there, sourcing a concrete crushing machine to break down the existing concrete into varying sizes of output and separating material screened through the process. The output can then be made available for multiple construction uses and therefore recovered/reused.
2019 marked a significant change for Cairns Regional Council's own internal construction and demolition waste reuse efforts, with the implementation of a new Council wide contract process for recovering and reusing much of this material. A driving force for this change was CRC's
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Issue: FEB 2020
strategic focus on reducing waste sent to landfill as part of its new Waste Reduction & Recycling Strategy, while simultaneously minimising costs associated with the now implemented QLD Waste Disposal Levy.
Representatives from across Council departments met with local industry stakeholders to workshop all options for recovering soil & green waste, asphalt, road pavement waste and of course construction and demolition material. The outcome, a new series of contracts put in place to provide for concrete crushing, internal material reuse (including road and non-structural concrete applications) and contracts with local operators across the Council region to achieve greater diversion of C&D waste from landfill.
In the second half of 2019, an impressive 13 tonne remote controlled, 240 Horsepower 'Hammerbreak' mobile shredder arrived on site at Portsmith, Cairns (operated by local contractor Bugeja Earthmoving) its mission, to divert the majority of pre-selected concrete material from landfill from Council operations. In its first 10 weeks of operation more than 2,200 tonnes of concrete material had been crushed, screened and put back into new projects
for the Council, including use in non-structural concrete construction projects (such as footpaths), site grading and as bedding material. The screening process also able to recover steel from the waste material, which is then sent to recycling contractors.
Manager of Waste, Cairns Regional Council Steve Cosatto said “At the heart of everything we do as an organisation is achieving a future where landfilling of waste is the last option. Cairns Regional Council wants to lead by example in treating concrete and construction waste as the potential valuable resource it can be. We are excited to see new technologies and partnerships between local operators, government agencies and community to maximise our resource recovery potential, all doing our bit to move towards a more circular local economy”
Recycling and reuse of Construction and Demolition waste is definitely the way forward for organisations like Cairns Regional Council, achieving reduced costs for waste operations while simultaneously delivering greater environmental protection.
