Waste Tyres - Not Necessarily Anymore

We have been associated with some technology to use end of life tyres in civil construction.  It works very well and is described at www.ecoflex.com.au .

But more is happening in this space with a lot of success using tyres in steel making.

UNSW collaborated with industry partner OneSteel to develop ‘green steel’ technology, wherein old tyres and plastics provide a source of carbon to replace a significant proportion of the non-renewable coke used to make steel in electric arc furnaces.

The ‘green steel’ technology invented at UNSW has now achieved a major milestone, with its use in Australia preventing more than two million waste rubber tyres from ending up in landfill. The discarded tyres were used by OneSteel, an Arrium company to manufacture steel at its Sydney and Melbourne facilities.

UNSW Scientia Professor Veena Sahajwalla collaborated closely with OneSteel to develop the polymer injection technology.

Professor Sahajwalla, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT@UNSW) in the Faculty of Science said they were thrilled to have surpassed the two-million tyre milestone. The achievement demonstrates the benefits of collaborations between researchers and industry.

Under an agreement with UNSW’s commercialisation company, NewSouth Innovations, OneSteel has sub-licensed the technology to companies in Thailand, South Korea and the United Kingdom and has plans to further commercialise it around the globe.

Daniel Miles, Manager Steelmaking Solutions at OneSteel observes that close collaboration between OneSteel and UNSW has turned an innovative idea into a manufacturing reality. He explains that polymer injection technology is not only good for the environment, but also offers financial benefits for the steel manufacturer in terms of reduced electricity consumption, lower carbon injectant costs as well as yield and productivity improvements.

Professor Sahajwalla is now working towards her goal of a 100 per cent recyclable car, developing high-temperature technology that can turn waste glass and plastic into valuable metallic alloys – an approach that could also be used to transform electronic waste.

Professor Sahajwalla was awarded $2.2 million earlier this year by the Federal Government to establish a ‘green manufacturing’ research hub at UNSW, with industry partners including Arrium, Brickworks Building Products, Jaylon Industries and Tersum Energy.

In August, Professor Sahajwalla was awarded a prestigious Australian Laureate Fellowship worth $2.37 million.

This work is absolutely awesome and demonstrates how innovative thinking can solve BIG problems!

Recycling is BETTER

Many working in the waste industry including recycling tend to believe that recycling is a better option.

Now there is Australian data to back that up.  Recycling is BETTER.  More jobs in that sector, substantial energy savings - 241 million Gjoules per year, plus water and greenhouse gas generation savings.

These are substantial benefits.

Yet in the NT we seem to be stuck in a time warp, with little progress other than send it to landfill.  Even the greenwaste is inadequately managed with the monster piles created in Darwin inadequately dealt with to use productively as a source of nutrients and carbon for agriculture, mining site rehabilitation and similar issues, including simple issues of land cover to protect the surface from erosion and the loss of soil into waterways.  Come on construction companies.......you can do better, so can the landfill site operators.

Mulch is expected to be in short supply in both WA and SA in future years if not already, due to significant market development by commercial companies and use of product in both commercial and domestic horticulture and agriculture. 

Then there are other materials such as glass and metals.  The latter are valuable and there is an effort to recycle generally, but what of glass and used tyres?  Both have had commercial development yet are not embraced.  Used tyres especially are a valuable component for civil construction and erosion management [ see www.ecoflex.com.au ].  Locally there has been a recent report on using glass in civil construction - but is it happening?  So far, it seems no.

Locally we can do much better.

There is a link to the full report below. However, one view of the report is that it has excluded any details on tyre recycling, data on organics recycling is somewhat dated and it lacks much direction on where the industry might go.  A lot of collated data, but I am not sure how useful it really might be, although it fills a lot of report space.
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Recycling trumps landfills
A new report confirms the Australian recycling sector is a bigger employer and generates more revenue than the landfill sector, but significant barriers remain to its growth and development.

These figures come as results of the release of the Australian Recycling Sector Report, prepared by consultancy Net Balance for the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.

The lengthy and far-reaching report covers recycling processes and markets, the economic value of the industry, its environmental benefits, the regularity environment, standards, industry barriers, data collection and a future outlook.

Australian Council of Recycling CEO Rod Welford said the study "confirms [recycling] generates more jobs than landfill". Key aspects of the report are summarised below.

Volumes and dollars
The report draws on the most recent figures reporting that 26 million tonnes of material was recycled in Australia in 2008/2009. The study quoted the Inside Waste Industry Report 2011-2012, noting from this volume the value of recycling in Australia was around $6.145 billion.

Most of this revenue (50% or so) is attributed to the sale of recovered materials, but the report cautions markets are highly variable. More than half ($3.8 billion) of the revenue from recycling was generated in NSW and Victoria.

The contribution of the recycling sector to Australian employment is estimated at a little less than 1% - meaning approximately 22,000 people (full time equivalents) are employed in recycling in Australia.

This equates to 9.2 full time employees for every 10,000 tonnes of waste processed.

Environmental Benefit
While recycling remains a relatively small employer in Australia, the report makes clear the environmental benefits of recycling are considerable.

In total, the report estimates recycling generate approximately 241,000,000 GJ-equivalent of energy savings. This is enough energy to power around five million homes.

Other key environmental savings estimated include 172 gigalitre of water, equivalent to 10% of Australia's water consumption and 15 million tonnes of greenhouse emissions as a carbon dioxide equivalent.

Barriers to improvement
A summary of the barriers impeding greater recycling put a lack of investment in recycling and limited infrastructure as the primary challenges facing the sector.

A lack of business recycling uptake, the distance of materials to markets and consumer behaviour are also key barriers.

The full report can be downloaded from the DSEWPC website. Further information on the Australian recycling industry is also available in the Inside Waste Industry Report 2011-2012.

National Recycling Week

Do you recycle?


Most Australians recycle paper especially newsprint, where about 75% or more is recycled. Office paper is also generally recycled or shredded, mostly, for security reasons, often after reuse for scribbling notepads.


And we do reasonably well with aluminium cans too.



South Australia has container deposit legislation and the NT is about to introduce the same broad system of container deposits. South Australia has very high rates of recycling of a wide range of containers, much higher than other states of Australia. Attributed almost entirely to the legislation, and there is a thriving industry around the system as well. Drum Muster handles recycling of agrochemical containers very well.



Organic or green waste recycling is well established around many areas of Australia with various degrees of success, with South Australia actually having a deficit in supply.......yes there is more demand than supply!! Horticulture is a big user, particularly the vineyard industries of the State, with the same industry in other states also a big user of mulch and composts.





Yet there are poor examples around Australia, with tyres [ see photo of a smart way to recycle tyres] and e-waste notable examples. Additional tyres are now shredded or chopped and exported for further processing, but generally we seem to generate a lot of waste tyres still. E-waste is a growth area, and so far the problem continues to grow, although some progress is being made locally on some modest areas.



November 7 -13 is Australia's National Recycling Week. Do your bit........every bit of recycling counts.

More information is here - http://recyclingweek.planetark.org/fff/ with the Friday File Fling a fun way to get into recycling.

Ecoflex Does the Job for Erosion Management

With the support of an NT Government Environment Grant plus assistance from the Department of Planning and Infrastructure a trail to evaluate Ecoflex as a roadside scour protection on floodways was installed late in 2006. This follows earlier use in the NT in other projects.

The trial is on the Cox Peninsula Road, about 130kms from Darwin, and close to the end of the Delissaville airstrip on the western side of Darwin Harbour.

Local Darwin weather has been relatively quiet since the project was completed in November 2006, with the rain in the period up to late February relatively low, by local standards, and no major storm events. But, over the period March 1, 2007 through 6 March, that changed - with over 500 mm in this period with about 90% falling in the three days 3-5 March. The area flooded, with around 300mm across the road, although relatively slow moving, and the road was closed, except for large 4WD and trucks on Saturday and Sunday.

The Ecoflex has come through the first part of the trial very well, with no apparent damage. This was expected, based on results in temperate Australia, but they do not usually get rain like this! It is early in the length of the trial, but it looks very promising.

Ecoflex is a low cost option in lieu of the conventional use of wire mattress protection, and it uses Ecoflex units produced from truck tyres. It is energy and greenhouse gas saving AND costs less. The performance is at least equal to existing options, and potentially superior in some areas.

A brief report is available on request to office@abovecapricorn.com.au and more details on Ecoflex uses at the web site www.ecoflex.com.au .