Waste recovery wins Bundaberg a Premier’s Sustainability Award

At the recent Queensland Premier’s Sustainability Awards, Bundaberg Regional Council (BRC) won the prestigious Minister’s Award for Leadership. The award honoured BRC’s waste recovery efforts following three consecutive natural disasters over the 2013 Australia Day long weekend, which left more than 4500 Bundaberg premises flooded.

Bundaberg Regional Council Mayor Cr Mal Forman explained that the clean-up of flood damage, combined with resource recovery, could not have happened as quickly if it weren’t for the help of SITA Australia, a specialist in resource recovery, recycling and waste management.

“SITA came to our assistance almost immediately following the flooding [and], combined with council’s own waste management resources, were able to remove incredible tonnages of rubbish during the clean-up period,” he said. “In fact, the work they did and the rubbish they cleared in a few weeks was equal to 12 months’ worth of waste removal locally.”

BRC and SITA established three temporary disaster waste stockpile stations, located as close as possible to the affected areas. Here, teams sorted the immense amount of disaster waste, enabling the valuable resources to be re-used and recycled.

Sourcing special machinery for the process, it was possible to extract mattresses, roofing and fencing metals, whitegoods, tyres, green waste, animal carcasses and meat products, gas bottles and hazardous wastes. Of the 65,000 tonnes of waste generated from the disasters, council was able to recycle an estimated 30,000 tonnes - over 40%.

SITA’s Queensland State General Manager, Peter Hudson, said, “From the Mayor down, BRC was very proactive about wanting to minimise all the waste to landfill and recover and recycle everything possible. SITA’s strength lies in our resource recovery expertise, so we were delighted to be able to contribute to BRC winning this award.”