Published on Friday, 16 March 2018 at 8:00:00 AM
The EMRC has taken a large step forward into the future of waste management with the signing this week of the Waste Supply Agreement with Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI) for the East Rockingham Resource Recovery Facility.
This follows the signing of the Participants Agreement with the Cities of Belmont, Kalamunda, Swan and the Shire of Mundaring for the project last week.
These agreements will see 95,000 tonnes of residual waste diverted each year from the Red Hill Waste Management Facility landfill site from as early as 2021.
Residual waste is what remains after all strategies of reducing, re-using and recycling have taken place.
The East Rockingham Resource Recovery Facility is Australia’s first utility scale municipal solid waste to energy facility that will use state of the art technology recognised as ‘world’s best practice’ for producing saleable energy from waste that would otherwise go to landfill.
The EMRC Chairman Councillor David McDonnell said that reducing, re-using and recycling had always been, and will continue to be, the key strategy of waste management at the EMRC.
“There will always be some level of residual waste remaining so putting it to use as a renewable energy source, as an alternative to fossil fuel, makes economic as well as environmental sense,” he said.
Under the terms of the agreements, the participating Councils will supply their waste to the facility on a ‘waste arising basis’ which means they will only pay for the capacity they use. This means there is no penalty for Councils who successfully implement landfill waste reduction schemes such as a third bin for compostable organic waste.
The East Rockingham Facility will have the capacity to convert 330 000 tonnes of waste per year into clean renewable energy, producing 28 megawatts(MW) of baseload energy which is enough to power 36,000 homes.
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