A REGIONAL waste group believes it could have the answer to the region’s recycling crisis.
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Grampians Central West Waste and Resource Recovery Group have commissioned a feasibility study to explore opportunities to develop a material recovery facility, possibly located in the Wimmera.
It comes as China’s ban on imports of Australian paper and plastic waste forced councils including Horsham, Buloke, Ararat and Northern Grampians to search for alternative storage when waste contractors stopped accepting material.
Executive officer La Vergne Lehmann said the group wanted to offer a viable solution to the recycling problem. However, she said a material recovery facility was only one piece of the puzzle.
The facility would involve sorting recyclable materials appropriately before it went to manufacturers to be reprocessed as raw materials.
“We need to get it right from kerbside right through to the end market,” she said.
“The facility itself is important, but it’s one piece of the puzzle. Before we say we will have a sorting facility in a certain location, we need to look at the whole picture.”
The group encompasses 12 council areas from Moorabool Shire to West Wimmera Shire.
Ms Lehmann said collaboration between councils was important.
“Councils need to decide on its priorities. If it’s simply getting the cheapest cost for their waste, then they might choose to send it to Melbourne. If they want to make it an opportunity for the region, then having a sorting facility could be a solution,” she said. “We do not want to set businesses up to fail.”
Horsham councillor Mark Radford said the recycling ban was an opportunity for the municipality.
He told Monday night’s council meeting that a material recovery facility had previously operated in Horsham, which sorted recyclable materials gathered from roadside collection services throughout the region.
But the facility closed after councils decided sending recyclables to Melbourne was a cheaper alternative.
Cr Radford said re-establishing a material recovery facility would create employment opportunities.
“I think it’s a great opportunity. We have done this before, we have people in town who can guide us and we could potentially do it on a larger scale,” he said.
Cr Radford proposed the Wimmera Intermodal Freight Terminal as an ideal location for a future facility because it had an established road network and train line.