WasteSorted Awards 2022 - Winners’ Stories

Boddington RRR is a not-for-profit organisation focusing on reducing, reusing and recycling. Beginning in January 2021, a project collecting bottle caps for local artwork developed into a large-scale community recycling initiative. The project participants noticed that mining gear such as hard hats, safety glasses and PET strapping were not being recycled due to their mixed content. Boddington RRR now dismantles and processes these materials separately and collects community waste as a part of its program. Materials are shredded and repurposed into useful items or new markets are found for the processed materials. Not only has this project provided a way for people to complete community service hours, but it also educated the community on waste reduction and recycling options. It is an example of what can be done by a dedicated group of people in a small community motivated to reduce waste and improve recycling.

Highly Commended: Responsible Cafes

Alkimos Beach is a 6 Green Star rated master-planned coastal community developed in partnership by Lendlease and DevelopmentWA (formerly LandCorp). Through its partnership with EarthCare Recycling an innovative construction waste recycling program was implemented with the builders operating in Alkimos Beach. The multi-bin system captures bricks, timber, metal, plastic, tiles, plasterboard and sand. As a result, the total material collected from Alkimos Beach from 2013 to 2021 was 32,200 tonnes with less than 1,500 tonnes going to landfill. This equals an average of 95 per cent total material diverted from landfill through this program.

Highly Commended: Bateup Consulting (GreenChair)

WA Recycling is has shown leadership in the recycling and recovery of construction and demolition waste. It strives to deliver resourceful and sustainable waste management solutions for the civil, construction and demolition industries. After identifying that there was no quality purpose-built recycling facility within WA, it collaborated with recyclers in both Victoria and New South Wales to research and build an indoor construction and demolition processing facility. WA Recycling recycles approximately 300,000 to 350,000 tonnes of construction and demolition waste materials per annum and produces clean recycled products, with 99 per cent of plastic, paper, wood and metal contaminants removed and recycled.

Highly Commended: Esperance Care Services

The Shire of East Pilbara is the largest Shire in Australia. The Shire identified that there were limited options or educational materials for the community to dispose of waste in correct ways. The Shire has initiated several activities and projects for the Newman community to become involved with. This included commencing recycling in the town of Newman, developing educational videos by a local film maker spoken in the Martu Wangka language with English subtitles, creating a waste and recycling guide with translations in Martu Wangka, organising the bin tagging program, and establishing e-waste drop-off points throughout the region of East Pilbara.

Highly Commended: Boddington RRR

Highly Commended: East Kimberley Job Pathways - Containers for Change

Gordon Bateup is the director of Bateup Consulting and founder of GreenChair. After 20 years working as a Project Manager in the construction and fit out industry, Gordon identified an issue in the way organisations were disposing of corporate furniture. With construction and demolition waste making up 44 to 48 per cent of waste sent to landfill, he set out to establish an innovative waste and sustainability furniture repurposing program – GreenChair. The repurposing program was designed to reduce waste going to landfill and be a part of the circular economy by facilitating the transfer of unwanted furniture to not-for-profit organisations, charities and community groups. In under two years, over 123,500 kilograms of commercial furniture has been diverted from landfill due to GreenChair, equating to over 438.30 tonnes CO2 equivalent saved.

The Resource Recovery Group (RRG) and the Western Metropolitan Regional Council (WMRC) worked collaboratively to co-create the GREAT Games education materials to communicate positive waste behaviours to the community in fun and engaging ways. Between the two regional councils, the GREAT Games are currently reaching over 172,000 residents and are available to 63 schools. By educating beyond kerbside bin recycling, GREAT Games encompasses messages of gifting, recycling, earth-cycling, avoiding, and taking items to be safely disposed of or recycled. To become a sustainable society, it is important to successfully educate our youth and this is what the GREAT Games strive to achieve.

Highly Commended: City of Albany - FOGO Implementation

After 30 years of providing employment and support opportunities for people with disability, Workpower sees the waste and recycling industry as a perfect avenue for training, upskilling and employment opportunities. Currently it has a waste team of 120 people (35 per cent who are supported employees) who are passionate about building a better future for the planet as well as people with disability. The waste team delivered three Reuse Shops, with the fourth to be launched in March 2022, and took on the challenge of hard-to-recycle items such as fire extinguishers, fridges and coat hangers. They partnered with some of the best in the business to deliver regional e-waste collections and recycle hair salon waste as part of a national initiative. With a diverse portfolio of operations, Workpower’s Waste Team diverts a total of 15,615 tonnes of waste per year.

Highly Commended: Brookfield Place Perth - Breaking the Plastic Habit

Highly Commended: Give Write

The Town of Cambridge, together with its recycling partners Total Green Recycling and Paraquad, created an e-waste drop off model that challenges the standard model. Its new model improved waste outcomes and opportunities for residents; provided opportunities to reuse unwanted items and created partnerships. Approximately 80 to 90 percent of e-waste collected is sent for recycling or recovery. Approximately 10 to 20 percent of recovered e-waste is donated to an onsite charity truck that collects working electrical items for testing and tagging, refurbishing and sale.

Beeliar Primary School is located in the south western suburbs of Perth. Over the last four years, Beeliar Primary School successfully developed numerous school-wide waste reduction programs with the goal of reducing and recycling waste. These programs achieved some impressive results including the Waste Wise Warrior Program, a new 4-bin system, a chicken coop to collect the eggs from the chickens and giving the canteen vegetable scraps to the chickens instead of sending them to landfill. Over the last two years running, the school has reduced its overall waste production by 30 tonnes when compared to 2019 and has changed its main waste bins from two landfill bins to only one. Part of this reduction is through diversion of waste to recycling such as soft plastics, fruit and vegetable waste and containers sent to Containers for Change.

Highly Commended: Hillcrest Primary School

Highly Commended: Koorda Primary School

The Town of East Fremantle has been running the East Fremantle’s George Street Festival since 1989. In December 2021 it entertained over 10,000 people and the Town set new records in relation to waste minimisation and set a new path for best practise of sustainable large scale community events. It provided a three-bin Food Organics Garden Organics (FOGO) system as well as Containers for Change collection bins across the event.  The Town’s Sustainable Events Policy restricted single-use plastics from all areas of the festival and opted for reusable alternatives. Over the seven-hour duration of the festival only 146.6 kilograms of waste was produced, 48 kilograms of waste sent to landfill, with 98 kilograms of waste being recovered. The Town aims to use the Event as a case study for other local governments and event organisers on how to implement reusables and a FOGO bin system to successfully to avoid waste at events.

The City of Wanneroo developed the ‘WasteSorted Talking My Language’ multilingual educational toolkit. It was created to overcome the difficulties experienced by culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) demographics in understanding waste services information due to language and literacy barriers. The learning resource is comprised of a deck of multilingual waste education flash cards, a set of three-mini bins, translated educational flyers and suggested activity guide. The toolkit is available in 10 languages from City of Wanneroo libraries and schools and is suitable for not only children but for adults as well. During its activation period, 95 per cent of survey participants indicated the learning kit was helpful in understanding correct waste sorting behaviours, proving to be a useful resource for the community and a model for other local governments.

After 30 years of providing employment and support opportunities for people with disability, Workpower sees the waste and recycling industry as a perfect avenue for training, upskilling and employment opportunities. Currently, they have a waste team of 120 people (35 per cent who are supported employees) who are passionate about building a better future for planet as well as people with disability. Together, the Workpower Waste Team has delivered three Reuse Shops (with the fourth to be launched in March 2022) and taken on the challenge of hard-to-recycle items like fire extinguishers, fridges and coat hangers. They have partnered with industry specialists to deliver regional e-waste collections and recycling of hair salon waste as part of a national initiative. With a diverse portfolio of operations, Workpower’s Waste Team diverts a total of 15,615 tonnes of waste per year.