In an article for the Sydney Morning Herald, Melinda Ham outlines a few of the key processes by which waste is recycled and reused throughout Australia. As recycling becomes a necessity rather than a nicety, the importance of turning wastes into value-added products will become increasingly vital to life as we know it.
The Reincarnation of Rubbish summarizes the life of common items such as glass, plastic, aluminium and steel, paper, and food/general waste. In the article, Ham notes that separating our recycleables once a week may seem like a daunting task, “but the truth is, every glass jar, plastic milk bottle, newspaper, beer can, or dead flower, is a small step in a huge national recycling effort that reduces landfill and greenhouse gases (Ham).” According to the article, currently two out of five bottles and jars manufactured in Australia are made from recycled material. Michelle Mandl-Keating, manager at Transpacific Cleanaway, says glass can also be used as a road base, and reduces our dependency on sand.
FEECO has been involved in waste transformation for decades. Our lab testing and tolling capabilities have helped companies around the world solve their waste material problems. Some of our past projects include turning sulphur stack emissions into granulated fertilizers, compost into fertilizer pellets, corn cobs into cat litter and oil dry pellets, and gypsum wallboard waste into fertilizer and cat litter pellets, to name a few. As the need to alleviate the burden on landfills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions intensifies, the need for innovative waste transformation processes is growing at an exponential rate.