Government funds high-tech sorting facility in WA

A planned $15 million paper and cardboard sorting facility at Veolia’s Bibra Lake Resource Recovery Park is set to receive a grant totalling $8.3 million from the federal and Western Australian governments’ Recycling Modernisation Fund.

Acting as a secondary sorting facility at Bibra Lake, the new site will increase the resource recovery park’s maximum sorting and paper processing capacity to 40,000 tonnes, allowing it to recycle more paper and cardboard from 17 WA councils and businesses.

The expansion of the Bibra Lake facility marks the latest investment by Veolia in Western Australia’s circular economy ― and more initiatives are planned, according to Veolia ANZ’s Chief Operating Officer Resource Recovery, Craig Barker.

“Veolia’s global Green Up strategy has put Australia and states like Western Australia with strong circular economy policy settings firmly in the spotlight for future investment. This expansion of Bibra Lake is an example of responding to policy settings and we expect to invest even more in sustainable technology and infrastructure in the future,” Barker said.

Barker added that government support for facilities such as this one was vital for the economy and the environment. “It closes the loop on our circular economy and in this case has expanded the export market in Western Australia for a high-quality fibre resource. The recycled fibres we recover here are a valuable resource for paper and cardboard manufacturers around the world,” he said.

The high-tech sorting facility will extend Bibra Lake’s ability to extract valuable resources from a multitude of different waste types, including municipal waste from kerbside recycling and organic waste bins, commercial and industrial waste, and bulk hard waste from council verge collections.

The facility will employ an additional six optical sorters and a ballistic separator that together identify and remove mixed plastics, non-ferrous materials, glass, and a range of other contaminants from the paper and cardboard streams. Veolia said this would enable the facility to meet the federal government’s stringent export standards of 95% purity levels from 1 July 2026.

“The RMF grant provides us with the latest technology to improve the quality of the resources we extract and reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill, but we will also need a strong workforce because humans can still see and catch things that even the latest machines may miss,” Barker said.

“Together humans and high tech at our Bibra Lake Resource Recovery Park divert over 94,000 tonnes of waste from landfill every year, working hard today to create the circular economy of tomorrow.”

Image credit: iStock.com/kisgorcs