AFTER close to four years of challenges and rejections, Suez has announced that it will not proceed with the Allawuna Farm landfill project near York, 97km east of Perth.

Suez had intended to redevelop the site, about 18km west of the town in the state’ s Wheatbelt and had faced numerous hurdles along the way, the most significant being two rejections by the Wheatbelt Joint Development Assessment Panel( JDAP).

The company in turn, repeatedly said the landfill would not impact water supplies and asserted that“ rigorous environmental assessments” had been undertaken.

Moreover, Suez pointed out that the project accounted for less that 5 % of the 1516-hectare farm, which would remain a working farm.

In September last year, the company even scaled back the footprint of the $ 8 million project by 31 % as well as

the volume of waste to be received at the site by some 46 %. The nominal life of the landfill was downgraded to 20 years from 37 years.

In March this year, it appeared that Suez’ s efforts had paid of when the State Administrative Tribunal( SAT) gave the green light to proceed with the project.

Suez state general manager for WA Nial Stock said the decision was made for commercial reasons, following the

company’ s $ 87 million acquisition of Perthwaste in April.

“ While the Allawuna Farm project was acknowledged as an environmentally safe and appropriate development for the site, the Perthwaste acquisition delivered additional waste management infrastructure to Suez in Western Australia, which removed the need for the new landfill facility,” Stock said.

THE reality is, once waste tyres leave our waters, we pay little attention to their fate. This condition cannot continue, says Tyre Stewardship Australia( TSA). As such, TSA has embarked on a program to ensure endof-life tyres exported from Australia are used in an environmentally sound way wherever they end up.

As a start, the organisation has released its Best Practice Guideline for Downstream Vendor Selection and Verification.

“ This is a huge step forward in the management of end-of-life tyres in Australia. We absolutely must ensure that waste tyres being exported from Australia are ending up at high quality, fully licensed facilities with the environmental controls we would expect to see in a facility on home soil. We simply can’ t export our responsibilities,” TSA CEO Matt Genever said.

In essence, the guidelines aim to help collectors and recyclers identify and manage downstream verification as required by the scheme and remain compliant with their TSA accreditation.

Tyres and tyre-derived products that fall within the scope of these guidelines include whole and baled tyres( where they are not exported for reuse or re-treading); tyre-derived fuel( i. e. shredded tyres) for domestic and export markets to be used for energy recovery( i. e. co-processing for use within cement kilns) or energy generation( i. e. incineration for use in power plants); domestic tyre use for re-use and re-treading; pyrolysis for the recovery of steel, fuel oil and / or syngas for energy recovery and to activate carbon or carbon black both domestically( emerging) and internationally; domestic civil engineering products( structural and road and train beds); and domestic industrial and consumer products derived from granulation / crumbed rubber( i. e. for road applications, flooring and playground surfaces).

The guidelines simplify the requirements by specific stakeholders around obtaining and retaining key information to enable the verification of downstream vendors.

TSA CEO Matt Genever.

It lists out what evidence needs to be retained by the recycler / exporter, what needs to be obtained prior to transport / shipping, evidence that needs to be passed on to the recycler / exporter following the receipt of use of the tyres and tyre-derived products, and what information needs to be handed to the recycler / exporter and maintained for the life of the contract period for the end use of the tyres and tyre-derived products.

This information collected and retained by stakeholders pertains to categories such as:

• Evidence of import countries( Basel Convention);

• Tyre and product form;

• Export declaration from Australia;

• Current / future sales contract document / agreements;

• Sales / remittances documentation;

• Export bill of ladings for monthly export sales; and

• Evidence to support environmentally sound use of waste tyres within Australia and other evidence pertaining to the legitimacy of end-use in export markets. This evidence may include description of end use, exact location of end use, destruction / use certificates, environmental permits, accreditations and licenses, secondary broker details.