Orange’s City Council pioneering waste management system is trailing a new technique using compostable environmentally-friendly alternatives.
Council contractor JR Richards has begun a trial of a new kind of plastic film used to wrap bales of waste before they are transported to the landfill site.
The new material is compostable and will break-down much sooner than conventional plastic.
Rare among Australia’s waste management systems, Orange’s landfill waste is compressed into cubic-metre bales to save on landfill space.
To protect the local honey industry at the landfill site, on Euchareena Road near Molong, the compressed bales are also wrapped in layers of plastic.
The wrapping process is designed to prevent bees from being potentially infected by diseases linked to imported supermarket honey that’s been thrown away.
The plastic pallet wrap holds the bales together while they are transported to the landfill site.
The wrapped bales can also be efficiently stacked, saving space in in the landfill site.
The downside is that plastic wrap adds around thirty tonnes of extra waste to landfill each year.
Now a compostable replacement wrap is being trialled, made in Australia from plant-based oils and agroforestry waste, by Melbourne manufacturer, GreatWrap (link).
Council waste contractor JR Richards is trialling the new wrap product at the Ophir Road Resource Recovery Centre, to see how it compares for cost and performance.
The compostable benefit is already clear: while traditional pallet wrap can take hundreds of years to break down in landfill, the new compostable wrap will break down much faster.
