“Those who think that sustainability is only a matter of pollution control are missing the bigger picture. We are poised at the threshold of an historic moment in which many of the world’s industries may be transformed.”

(Dr. Stuart Hart, “Beyond Greening Strategies for a Sustainable World,” Harvard Business Review)

The main problem with current European waste management is that our 19th century industrial systems and the throw-away societies that have emerged from the industrial revolution have created a legacy of one-way flows of virgin resources to destruction in landfills and incinerators. The result is massive damage to the environment, the total waste of resources, and inefficient production with few benefits to local communities.

In many parts of the world, Resource Recovery Parks are proving today’s most progressive waste management system and provide a very real alternative to present Waste Management practices. Resource Recovery Parks (RRPs) differ from Amenity Sites, as all materials for recovery and recycling are brought to the park for initial sorting, cleaning and processing. They can then be made into new value-added products on the same site; thus, cutting down on the costs of transportation and traffic volume.

The principle behind RRP’s is to divert all reusable materials away from landfill or incineration by adding value. In this recovery park, wealth-from-waste industries and small businesses are co-located. The co-location of such industries is the most important factor in an RRP, as this generates the “Local Multiplier Effect,” such as in a “Mall” or waste exchange in which businesses of like-kind might cluster together and provide a competitive, yet supportive environment. One business feeds another, so to speak, by matching wastes from one company to the resource needs of another. As an RR park develops organically, it becomes an innovative, supportive, and fertile ground for new ideas on how to expand reuse, recycle, and compost in an area.

One such example of an award-winning RRP is to be found in the Wingecarribee Shire Council in New South Wales, Australia. As part of a Local Agenda 21, the local council incorporated the concept of sustainable thinking into its waste management strategy. This RRP possesses many unique features, both in its construction and operation, all of which demonstrate sustainability and the sound use of recovered resources. To begin with, the park has been built on a reclaimed landfill site. Many of the materials used to build the park were exhumed and utilised to build the core of the perimeter mounding.

The park also contains a Transfer Station, the retaining walls of which were made of a ‘Reinforced Earth’ design and considered to be a first of its kind to be used for this purpose. The design was more cost effective than alternatives and facilitated the re-use of excavated landfill material. Wherever possible, recycled materials were used in the construction of the RRP. These included tyres, concrete blocks, recycled building waste, various reclaimed timber and steel products.

Besides a standard contemporary windrow composting operation for garden waste, ‘difficult’ organics are also processed on site, such as food waste, weeds, diseased plants, sewerage sludges, grits and screenings, as well as grease trap wastes and the like. The contractor has established a multi-cell ‘Vertical Composting Unit’, the first multi-cell facility in Australia. Composts from this facility are produced to Australian Standard 4454, enabling these previously ‘problematic’ organic wastes to be used across a wide range of applications. A vermiculture system is also planned by the contractor as part of his development.

Domestic recyclables delivered by residents are sorted directly by the residents into the appropriate containers. There is a very popular Reviva Centre, which operates a ‘new generation’ re-use, repair and buy back facility. This centre is returning a profit, with plans for expansion in the near future. The whole park is a pleasant place to bring all the family, housing a waste education centre as well as facilitating aspects of the Green School’s Programme. It has brightly coloured, clear signs, pleasant buildings, and no unpleasant smells usually associated with waste stations.

At present, this RRP is achieving upwards of 70% recycling. In other words, recycled and reclaimed materials are made into value-added goods on site by baling, chipping, shredding, pelletting and composting. It is also aiming at attracting more in situ C&D businesses that will collect and further process construction and demolition debris.

There are future plans for the park to also house an on-site Materials Recovery Facility (MRF). Ideally the MRF would separate all domestic materials into the recommended 12 main categories. These are: Reusables, Paper, Plant Debris, Putrescibles, Wood, Ceramics, Soils, Metals, Glass, Polymers, Textiles and Chemicals. These might all be further broken down, so as to create a purer feedstock, which then retains its virgin value and can be sold on to world markets, households, businesses and manufacturers. The manager of the Wingcarribee RRP, Miles Lochhead, believes it entirely possible to recover 90% of all wastes. Ideally, the remaining residuals that cannot be recycled back into nature or back into the market place should be rendered inert before going to “clean-fill.” This is achieved by steam-cleaning or MBT (Mechanical Biological Treatment).

With worldwide resources in decline, there will; however, be greater international pressure put on producers to come up with better eco-designs. The Zero Waste International Trust believes that anything that cannot be recycled back into nature or back into the market place should be subjected to severe levies, and because of this will, eventually, cease to be produced.

RRPs provide a tangible example of best practice that changes the public mindset away from thinking of waste as rubbish to be buried or burned, to recognizing that waste is potential wealth. Its full value is best achieved by putting it back into local communities. The green industry, in particular recycling, represents the fourth largest economic power in the world; and is the most rapidly growing. Resource Recovery creates jobs. In the U.S., the reuse and recycling industries support more than 56,000 establishments, employ over 1.1 million people, and generate annual revenues of 236 billion dollars. Sorting and processing recyclables sustains five to ten times more jobs than land-filling or incineration. Further, the Zero Waste Trust predicts 40,000 jobs will be created in New Zealand over ten years as they convert transfer stations into Resource Recovery Parks.

Waste is the new gold-mine of the 21st century.