Waste Management in the Blue Mountains *NEW*
In response to the City Vision and Map for Action – Towards a More Sustainable Blue Montains, reducing the volume of waste going to landfill has been a primary goal for Blue Mountains City Council over a number of years. This was a focus of the 2004-2008 Management Plan which included in the following objective:
'To reduce the amount of waste going to landfill through waste minimisation, resource recovery, recycling and educational awareness initiatives.'
So how has the City performed?
During the year immediately prior to the commencement of the 2004-2008 Management Plan (2003-2004), the Council buried 63,115 tonnes of waste material at its landfills. Utilising a range of activities including improved kerbside services, education and promotion, pricing strategies and the increased recovery of resources from delivered materials this was reduced to 45,950 tonnes during 2007-2008. This represents a reduction of 27% (16,824 tonnes) during the 4-year period.
The following chart provides an 8-year snapshot of the amount of waste landfilled at the Council's Blaxland and Katoomba Waste Management Facilities (WMFs).
Over the same time period there has been a substantial reduction in the number of people going to the WMFs. During 2003-2004 there were 117,224 vehicles accessing both WMFs. This reduced to 91,406 vehicles in 2007-2008. The reduction (25,818 vehicles) represents a 22% reduction in visitation over 4 years. The following chart identifies the 8-year visitation trend from 2000-2008.
It is believed that the kerbside chipping program, the bulky waste collection program and improvements to the recycling service have reduced the need for many residents to go to the 'tip.' There is also evidence that many WMF users have adopted waste avoidance and minimisation habits. Several of the 'skip bin' companies are now sorting their waste loads. Where previously those companies used to transport waste directly from their customers to the landfills, they have added a new step in the process - they return the material to their depots and sort through it, removing materials, such as metals, that can be on-sold. Most land clearing companies now have mobile chippers and have developed markets or outlets for their chipped material, previously thought of as waste.
The Council's operational teams have adopted waste recycling programs, diverting construction and maintenance wastes such as tree waste, asphalt, concrete and mixed soil from landfill disposal. This has saved waste disposal costs and the material is processed to create useful products. The change in approach has supported their efforts to introduce sustainable operating practices. They have also attracted some of the material historically delivered to landfill from residential and commercial sources by charging substantially lower 'gate' fees.
Pricing strategies have been introduced to penalise those that deliver mixed wastes. This has been very successful with most regular users of the WMFs now delivering separated loads that can be effectively reprocessed into useful resources, rather than being landfilled.
The following chart identifies the change over the past 8 years in the volume of mixed wastes (includes mixed commercial/industrial, mixed soil/organic and mixed building/demolition) delivered to the WMFs. It clearly shows that this waste stream peaked in 2003-2004 (31,218 tonnes). Since that time there has been a 39% reduction (12,297 tonnes) in this stream down to 18,921 tonnes.
The Council has been placing a very strong emphasis on education with a clear message to all residents about the services and options available to reduce waste. The campaign included the development of an annual service directory which is delivered to every residence. This education campaign has been highly successful with the waste coming from residential customers on the decline. This is clearly illustrated in the following chart which shows how waste from domestic sources has reduced over the last 8 years.
During the 4-year period since the commencement of the current Management Plan domestic waste disposed to landfill has reduced by 4,749 tonnes (15% reduction). In addition the residential chipping service has seen the return of valuable organic material directly to residents to use in their gardens, diverting some wastes that used to go to landfill. Furthermore, the bulky waste collection has resulted in the recovery of approximately 40% of the material placed out for collection.
Impacts on WMF Income
As can be seen from the discussion above, the reduction in waste delivered to the WMFs is substantial. Unfortunately, this very positive trend is having a dramatic impact on the income at both the Katoomba and Blaxland WMFs. The total 4-year reduction in waste landfilled (16,824 tonnes) equates to an income reduction of approximately $1.2 million in the 2007-2008 financial year.
The Council's Waste Management Facilities (WMFs) operate on business principles with the cost of operating the sites funded by access (gate) fees and reserves created from planned surpluses in previous years. The sites must pay for themselves to ensure that there are no financial impacts on the general rate income of Council. The greatest costs of operating Council's WMFs are not related to the volume of material processed. Rather, the greatest costs relate to the infrastructure and other operating overheads such as:
- debt servicing for capital infrastructure (including engineered landfill cells resource recovery facilities, leachate management systems and other structures);
- gatehouse management;
- plant and equipment; and
- sufficient staff for safe and effective site management at all times.
The extent of the income downturn has placed immense pressure on the short-term financing of the Waste Management Facilities. However, the longer term impact should be very positive given that additional airspace has been conserved. The extended life of the landfills will have substantial future cost benefits as it will delay the need to export waste outside the Local Government Area (LGA). The current calculated cost to export waste to the nearest Class 1 landfill able to take our waste (Eastern Creek) is approximately $207 per tonne. This is more than double the existing cost of operating the 2 landfill sites.
Theoretically, although the reduction of approximately16,800 tonnes has reduced income by a possible $1.2 million there is a net potential future savings benefit of $2.3 million (in today's dollars) from not exporting that volume of waste outside the local government area. Overall, the trends for the City-wide volumes indicates that the rate of reduction for some of the main waste streams may be stabilising.
How much is your garbage costing?
Did you know, the Council is planning to spend $25 million on providing waste services to the City in 2008-2009 including waste collection, recycling collection, greenwaste chipping, bulky waste collection, effluent removal, provision and maintenance of waste management facilities and remediation of former waste management facilities. The Council will be spending approximately $9.3 million dollars on work to expand and improve the Blaxland Waste Management Facility, to upgrade resource recovery facilities and to construct a waste transfer station and Katoomba Waste Management Facility and to remediate the former Lawson and Blackheath Waste Management Facilities.
The budget for 2008-2009 has been developed to better reflect the waste volumes being delivered to waste management facilities with the expected gate income from the Blaxland Waste Management Facility being reduced to approximately 72% of the original budget for 2007-2008. Furthermore, waste disposal charges have been increased for the waste collected at kerbside (Domestic Waste Management Charge) to reflect the difficulty in dealing with the highly mixed nature of the waste and its relative impact on disposal costs.
For more information on the Council's Waste Management Services visit 'Waste Management' on the Council's website.
Fore more information on waste management in the City download the 2006-2007 State of Environment Report.
For more information on the Council's Waste Management services and projects in 2008-2009 download the 2008-2009 Management Plan on the Council's website.