Single Bin Recycling
Single Bin Recycling: A Truly Sustainable Process
On 16 November 2001 the City of Stirling began recycling the contents of every household bin put out for disposal by our then 77,000 households. This represented one the major steps forward in the recovery of recyclables from the waste stream, for the City no longer had to depend on motivated householders to separate their domestic waste into recyclables and residual waste. And, the good news for residents is: we do the work for you!
After four years of research, a two year extended trial and two years of evaluation, the 16 November 2001 saw the City of Stirling and its waste disposal contractor, the Atlas Group, commission Australia's first 'Resource Recovery Facility.'
Atlas, a Western Australian company, designed the resource recovery facility. It represents world's best practice and can sort a mixture of household discards to recover organics (food, garden waste, and all paper), glass and plastic bottles, steel and aluminium cans.
The process is designed to keep all of the materials intact except the organic component. The process also removes paper labels from cans and bottles and even removes the contents of cans.
Recent audited results indicate that the plant will recycle 65%+ of the waste input.
By removing the need for householders to sort their domestic waste stream into two or more streams and using a factory to sort the waste in to six waste streams, every resident in the City of Stirling now recycles at the highest level with just one bin per household!
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The Single Bin Recycling Process
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Household waste is picked up in the weekly rubbish collection…
…and taken to the Atlas facility for treatment.
The household waste enters the Atlas Resource Recovery Facility…
…in which steel cans are removed with magnets…
…and baled ready for recycling.
Aluminium cans are removed in the process...
...as are glass bottles, jars and recyclable plastics.
The organic waste - the food scraps, garden waste and paper - is transported to the Atlas farm in Calingari...
...where it is made into compost for agriculture.
The non-recyclable residue is the only part of the waste that goes to landfil.
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The Resource Recovery Facility (RRF)
Given the importance of agriculture to Australia's economy, the Atlas group set about developing a process that would recover the bulk of the organic material for conversion in to high-grade compost. The removal of the organics also reduced the pollution impact of the solid waste due to the fact that organic materials produce the bulk of the greenhouse gas discharges associated with landfill disposal. To produce high quality compost, the organic materials needed to be sorted to remove non-organic contaminants.
The Atlas Group conducted worldwide research into waste disposal and recycling technology. They found that the overseas processes used to sort waste shredded the materials into small pieces. This made the task of separating the fractions very difficult and consequently showed up in low recovery rates and high discard rates.
The Atlas Group designed a sorting plant, which was to be gentle on waste. This results in most non-organic materials coming out of the sorting system in the same shape and size they were when they went in.
The process requires all householders to place all of their household waste, except hazardous household waste, in their single 240 litre mobile garbage bin. The contents are collected by the City's collection vehicles and deposited at the Atlas sorting plant. The material is loaded on to conveyor belts for feeding into revolving drums, which with the addition of some water gently separates all of the components previously mixed up and bagged by the householder. The sorting process takes less than one hour.
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