Published on Saturday, 1 February 2020 at 8:00:00 AM
For the past couple of months, the Southern Metropolitan Regional Council (SMRC) has been helping to recycle materials that were destined for the Cleanaway MRF destroyed by fire.
The fire, which destroyed Cleanaway’s facility in South Guildford in November, meant 20 of Perth’s Councils needed to find a new destination for their collected recyclables so they did not end up in landfill.
Interim agreement in place since November
SMRC Chairperson Councillor Doug Thompson said an interim arrangement was put in place with Cleanaway to allow a rapid ramp up to fill the gap in processing capacity at SMRC’s Regional Resource Recovery Centre (RRRC) in Canning Vale.
“We moved from one (eight-hour) shift to two and employed 15 new staff, sourced from those individuals who were working at Cleanaway.”
In addition to its member councils (City of Melville, City of Fremantle and the Town of East Fremantle), the RRRC was, up until 24 January, receiving recyclables from the City of Swan, City of Bayswater, City of Mandurah, Town of Vincent, Town of Victoria Park, City of Subiaco, and City of South Perth.
“We have been using our best endeavours to process as much of the Council collected recycling as possible,” he said.
Under normal operations, the RRRC was receiving recyclables from its member councils of the SMRC and was operating at around 25,000 tonnes per annum. Following the additional deliveries, operations had ramped up to 75% capacity.
Continued diversion at risk
The interim arrangement with Cleanaway came to an end on 24 January 2019. At this stage a further contract is not in place for future processing of their recyclables at the RRRC facility.
SMRC’s capacity
A number of Council’s affected by the Cleanaway fire are now delivering their recyclables direct to the SMRC’s facility.
Councillor Thompson said the SMRC has available capacity to receive and process recyclables from individual Councils in the event that this may be required.
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