Organics

Australia has a significant and growing challenge in how it manages its waste. Tonnages continue to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 6.2%, six times faster than population growth, and 2.5 times faster than GDP growth. Landfill costs are increasing due to landfill levies and landfill scarcity.

The NSW EPA has released the fifth round of the Organics Infrastructure (Large and Small) Program grant under the $337 million Waste Less Recycle More Initiative, 2014-17 (WLRM) extension. The new grants aim to help local councils, businesses, government institutions, not for profits, and industry organisations, depending on the type of grant project/stream.

By Mike Ritchie, MRA Consulting Group Australians use an estimated 5 billion single use plastic bags (supb’s) per year. Sounds like a lot but this represents only about 20,000 tonnes of plastic or 0.04% of the waste generated in Australia per year. If all of these plastic bags go to landfill they represent just 0.1% […]

by MRA Consulting Group As the NSW EPA’s WLRM extension has been announced, many grant packages are winding down, however there are still a few grant streams that are open: Resource Recovery Facility Expansion and Enhancement ($13.9million awarded to date); Organics Market Development – Stream 1: Product Quality ($189,000 awarded to date); and Community Litter […]

By Virginia Brunton, MRA Consulting Group MRA Consulting Group (MRA) together with a working group of food safety professionals and Freshcare, revised the Food Safety and Quality (FSQ) assurance code of practice (COP) and established criteria that allowed compost, produced under the Australian standard for composts (AS4454) to be used by farmers with Freshcare certification. […]

By Dimitris Dimoliatis, MRA Consulting Group Late last week, Mark Speakman the NSW Minister for the Environment announced the extension of the Waste Less Recycle More (WLRM) initiative to 2021. This second round of funding is the continuation of phase one of the WLRM that begun in July 2013 and will conclude in June 2017. […]

By Mike Ritchie – Managing Director, MRA Consulting Group The fourth Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction has recently been announced. This matters immensely for the waste and local government sectors. So many quality projects are working hard behind the scenes to reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. Whether that’s a third bin diverting organics out of […]

By Virginia Brunton – Principal Consultant (Organics), MRA Consulting Group Freshcare is the fresh produce industry’s own on-farm assurance program adopted by thousands of fresh produce businesses as their key food safety program. In addition to the Food Safety and Quality (FSQ) assurance code of practice (COP) to ensure safe fruit and vegetables, Freshcare also […]

The NSW EPA has released its fourth and final round of the Organics Infrastructure Large and Small (OILS) under the $465.7 million NSW Government Waste Less Recycle More initiative (WLRM). The new grants provide a one off opportunity to accelerate investment in recycling infrastructure and equipment that will reduce food and garden organics waste sent […]

By Virginia Brunton – Principal Consultant (Organics) and Mike Ritchie – Director, MRA Consulting Group The Great Barrier Reef is exposed to increasing pressures from climate change, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification, land-based runoff and other pressures. The summer of 2016 has been bad for the Great Barrier Reef (the Reef), one of Australia’s most […]

By Julien Gastaldi – Business Development Manager, MRA Consulting Group MRA Consulting Group (MRA) is proud to announce that it has successfully helped clients gain six abatement contracts with the Australia Government in the third Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF), which took place on the 27th and 28th of April. These projects will consequently allow the […]

The new Source Separated Organics (SSO) methodology has seen tremendous uptake in the countdown to the next Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) auction. The SSO methodology provides funding to projects that divert organic waste from landfill. Twenty-seven new, expanded and/or aggregated projects under the methodology diverting source separated organics were registered by MRA Consulting Group (MRA), […]