Q&A: From waste to resource recovery

Sustainabilty Matters asks SUEZ environnement’s Executive Director Infrastructure Emmanuel Vivant* about the company’s role in the ‘resource revolution’ in Australia and more.

What has triggered your newly formed company, SUEZ environnement, to focus on the ‘resource revolution’?

Our world’s natural resources are limited. Ultimately, we need to abandon the linear model of consumption from cradle to grave and move towards the circular economy where recycling and re-use become the norm.

We believe SUEZ environnement has a significant role to play in leading this revolution. Our customers want smarter solutions to meet their waste needs, and globally SUEZ environnement is prepared to lead, to innovate and to invest in solutions that can continue to transform waste into new resources and energy.

For us in Australia, we have also recently brought our water and waste divisions together under the one brand and management team. This enables us to provide our customers with access to a fully integrated waste and water group offering a larger panel of solutions and expertise.

What technology trends do you predict will help promote the resource revolution and improve the efficiency of recovering resources from waste in Australia?

The resource revolution can be seen as a new era in waste management by improving the recovery rate of resources from waste, particularly in Australia. I believe the future of waste management locally, besides material recovery already in train, will be around energy across multiple facets: alternative fuels, dedicated small-scale cogeneration (steam and electricity) plants, large-scale energy-from-waste (EfW) and anaerobic digestion. While these are not necessarily new and innovative, they will see the introduction of new technologies in our market.

We have already significantly invested in resource recovery infrastructure in Australia, from our network of Advanced Resource Recovery Technology (ARRT) facilities through to our de-packaging facility. We will continue to leverage our global expertise to provide smart and reliable solutions to the local market.

What are the unique challenges or roadblocks that may hold back the resource revolution in Australia?

There have been unique challenges for resource recovery as a result of the disparity in waste policy across Australia. For example, the waste levy, which is a key driver for waste avoidance and resource recovery, varies significantly across the country. This unfortunately triggers behaviours as we have seen with waste being transported from Victoria and New South Wales to Queensland. Although progress has been made in New South Wales, the interstate transportation of waste is still an issue and concern. The long-term impact of such policy differences will be detrimental to the establishment of resource recovery solutions and subsequently the resource revolution in Australia.

Another significant challenge has been the disappearance of Australia’s manufacturing industry as it has reduced the outlets for secondary products and recycled materials. It’s difficult to propose and establish new processing solutions without the certainty of long-term customer relationships and offtake agreements. This has also been driven by the bottom line for most customers when landfilling is the cheapest option for waste disposal and does not require the customers to change their operations.

Most know that aluminium, paper, PET plastics and glass, for example, can be recycled, but is there scope to improve the efficiency of these processes in order to achieve optimum recovery rates of these materials? If so, how and what is currently under development?

There is always scope to do more with our technologies, and SUEZ environnement is investing in the research behind the innovation. For example, last year in France we opened PLAST’lab, an innovative laboratory dedicated to recycling plastic; and in Belgium, ‘High 5’, a glass recycling plant that is capable of separating mixed coloured glass. As a company in Europe, we hope to double the production of recycled plastics in the next five years and the opportunity for us to leverage our global expertise to provide the best local solutions for the Australian market.

What types of material commonly found in the waste stream are proving to be the most challenging to recover and how can this be overcome? — For example, could the answer be waste avoidance of certain types of materials and how could this be achieved?

The issue is not material specific, rather how materials are found in the waste stream eg, how they are presented for recovery. Cross-contamination and mixing waste streams are major factors limiting resource recovery and possible re-use. For example, there are a lot of plastics (bottles, films, bags) in residual domestic waste received at our ARRT facilities. These materials are very difficult to recycle. Firstly, their recovery requires a lot of processing (equipment, handling and staff), adding significant expense.

Secondly, when recovered their quality is a major issue for the downstream potential offtakers due to the cross-contamination, in particular with organic matters. The best solution to facilitate resource recovery and improve the quality of recyclables while overcoming cross-contamination is source separation. With e-waste including equipment, appliances and whitegoods, the issue is around the difficulty to deconstruct and separate the materials used in the product to produce good-quality secondary raw materials.

In your opinion, what has been the key factor in the trending transition away from ‘waste-to-landfill’ in Australia and what else needs to be done to achieve zero-waste-to-landfill targets? That is, is a price on waste (ie, landfill tariffs) the only answer or is there scope to make current landfill sites more sustainable?

There’s a clear aspiration to reduce reliance on landfill in Australia. However, as I mentioned earlier, waste levies are a key driver for waste avoidance and resource recovery but they vary significantly across the country. Therefore, the intent of the levies is often undermined.

We would like to see more uniform levies across the country and the funds invested back into the resource recovery industry. Until resource recovery technologies evolve further, there still remains a role for well-managed landfills.

What have been the drawback or challenges that have held back waste-to-energy projects on landfill sites in Australia?

Australia is a large country with a lot of space. As a result, we haven’t seen the urban pressures experienced in other markets. With collective governments’ aspirations to reduce reliance on landfill and the development of policy frameworks we can now see the emergence of EfW projects in WA. We’ve also seen discussion in NSW with the release of the EfW policy. While there are a number of practical elements at play, such as the long-term waste supply agreements and financial elements such as the price of electricity, we do see future opportunities in Australia. We operate more than 50 EfW plants across the world and we’re currently exploring opportunities to leverage this knowledge and experience in Australia.

How can government policies help with the transition of the waste industry from a materials handling industry to a manufacturer of products from waste?

As previously mentioned, there are significant differences across the Australian state and territory jurisdictions in terms of waste policy, in particular the application of levies. There is merit in Australian state and territory governments taking a more strategic and coordinated regulatory approach to waste policy, and this would be of great assistance to the industry and support the transition from materials handling to manufacturers of products.

We need regulatory frameworks for materials derived from waste that increase their ability to compete with and replace traditional products. Changing government policy will hopefully encourage the use of secondary raw materials produced from waste and reduce what is sent to landfill. This also provides the opportunity for governments to lead in the procurement and use of secondary raw materials.

*Emmanuel Vivant has worked with SUEZ environnement since 2001. He has over 17 years of international experience with SUEZ environnement in the resource recovery and waste treatment sectors having previously held roles in France and Hong Kong. Emmanuel has a Civil Engineering degree.