Turning one person’s waste into another’s treasure

South East Water is putting a new twist on the well-known idiom “one person’s trash is another’s treasure” through an innovative pilot project that will help industrial Port Melbourne customers play a greater role in managing their place in the water cycle - recycling their wastewater into another’s resource for use during the manufacturing process.

As part of a memorandum of understanding with the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) and Sustainability Victoria, South East Water will partner with industrial customers in the Port Melbourne area to identify industrial ecology opportunities, or new options for water and trade waste re-use and reduction.

The Port Melbourne Industrial Ecology Project will see industrial customers in the area work together to identify ways to share water or engage in water transfer processes.

The partnership aims to demonstrate the social, financial and environmental benefits of industrial ecology, a rapidly evolving field of public practice which engages traditionally separate industries to collaborate in exchanges of water, materials, energy or by-products.

“The Victorian water industry faces a key challenge of ensuring water savings remains important to industrial customers,” said Vanessa Lenihan, South East Water Technical Services Manager, Trade Waste.

“Industrial ecology plays an important role in water reduction and re-use, enabling one company’s unwanted by-products to become another’s sought-after resource.”

The Port Melbourne Project is currently in testing stage, with South East Water playing a lead role in developing strategies for water transfer, to generate potential resource savings.

The Port Melbourne initiative is part of South East Water’s wider Industrial Ecology Program, the first of its kind by a water retailer in Australia, which aims to help high industrial water use customers look beyond company boundaries when looking at opportunities for resource reduction and re-use.

Established in June 2009, the program is already looking at six additional potential industrial ecology clusters throughout South East Water’s region, and work is currently underway to identify future water-sharing projects.

Lenihan said, “Our hope is that projects like these will open up further opportunities for industrial ecology throughout Victoria.”

The Port Melbourne Industrial Ecology Project is expected to be implemented within the next two years.