Resources

It has now been over a year since China introduced its National Sword policy to restrict the importation of kerbside recyclable materials from the rest of the world. The purpose of the policy was to increase the recovery of domestically generated recyclables within China and further boost its own manufacturing. The new rule is a 0.5% contamination rate in Australian exported material. Few Australian Materials Recovery Facilities (MRF) were built for that level of purity.

The NSW EPA has opened round 3 of its $2.5M Circulate Industrial Ecology (CIE) under the NSW Government Waste Less Recycle More initiative (WLRM). The new grants provide an opportunity for the establishment of viable industrial ecology relationships to divert valuable resources from landfill. The program supports projects that will recover materials (otherwise sent to landfill) to be used as feedstock for other commercial, industrial or construction processes.

By Mike Ritchie – Managing Director, MRA Consulting Group The circular economy matters… We are hearing more and more of the circular economy, an approach to resources that keeps materials away from waste, and brings them back into the productive economy. It rejects the status quo “take-make-dispose” linear economy in favour of cycling biological and […]