Infrastructure

By Mike Ritchie – Director, MRA Consulting Group On 16 February 2016, the Australian population reached 24 million people. Waste generation rates are a function of population growth, the level of urbanisation and per capita income[i] and Australians now produce about 50 million tonnes of waste each year, averaging over 2 tonnes per person. There […]

By Ron Wainberg – Technical Director, MRA Consulting Group Energy from Waste (EfW) is very well established overseas, but in Australia it has yet to get off the ground. The reasons for this are to be found in a complex combination of different historical factors: adequate landfill capacity, poor financial incentives, unfavourable public perceptions and lack […]

The NSW EPA has released a round of Weighbridge Funding under the $465.7 million NSW Government Waste Less Recycle More program (WLRM). The new grants provide a one off opportunity to recycling facilities and landfills to install weighbridges and perform associated civil works. The new grant funding is summarised below: Grant Eligible Applicant Criteria Funding […]

MRA announces its expansion into the Victorian market with the appointment of David Cocks as Victorian Manager. David joins MRA from Sustainability Victoria (SV) where he managed SV’s Waste and Resource Recovery Infrastructure Team. David brings to MRA a detailed understanding of Victoria’s waste policy and infrastructure landscape. Given the expansion of processing facilities already underway and in development, David’s experience, developing and evaluating business cases for the State government will […]

By Mike Ritchie Landfill gate fees typically cover costs of operation, overheads, mobile plant and equipment, labour, depreciation costs of roads and buildings and other fixed assets and profit. But the costs (and therefore the gate fee), also need to include 30-50 year post closure management, long term monitoring and reporting, and importantly replacement of […]

The NSW EPA’s risk-based licensing system commences on 1 July 2015. The goal of Risk Based Licensing is to allocate the maximum EPA resources to those sites that pose the greatest environmental risk and less to those that do not. The EPA intends to conduct an environmental Risk Assessment for each licenced site in NSW […]

Australia generates 48 MT/year of waste (latest National Waste Data Report 2014). In the period 1997-2012 our population rose by 22% but waste generation increased by 145%. There are more of us and we generate more waste per person, each year. On the positive side, recycling is growing at a faster rate and since 2005 […]

The QLD election has seen the ALP achieve one of the biggest swings in Australia’s political history. ALP QLD has officially secured 44 seats, giving it the required number to form a minority government. Annastacia Palaszcuk, Labor Premier and Steven Miles, the new QLD Environment Minister now have the task of revitalising the QLD recycling […]