Shellharbour City Council’s Dunmore Resource Recovery Centre was this week named as one of the top two facilities in the Australian Landfill and Transfer Station Awards Excellence category.

The national awards recognise excellence and innovation in waste management. Toowoomba Regional Council won first place, while Shellharbour City Council secured a credible second place, ahead of other similar Council and privately owned facilities right across Australia.

The impressive result follows national awards recently presented to Shellharbour’s Museum and City Library.

Shellharbour Mayor Marianne Saliba said she was extremely proud that the city’s resource recovery centre was recognised as one of the top two resource recovery centres in the country.

“This state-of-the-art facility leads the way in its scope of acceptable goods for recycling and reduction of waste materials going to landfill,” Cr Saliba said.

“It has delivered significant environmental benefits to the community and that is a credit to our city’s residents and Council staff.

“Combined with the recent national awards won by the City Library and Museum, the wonderful result represents the successful planning and investment Council has made for our community.

“I am so proud that our city’s new infrastructure and facilities are being recognised as some of the best in Australia. Our community can be proud of these results,” she said.

Shellharbour’s recovery centre was redeveloped approximately 18 months ago and is a fully integrated waste diversion facility that ties multiple levels of the waste hierarchy (avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle, dispose) into a single customer focused experience.

http://www.shellharbourwaste.com.au/Dunmore-Recycling-and-Waste-Disposal-Depot

The redevelopment meant Council increased the number of materials that could be diverted from five products to approximately 30 products.

Some of the highlights of the fully integrated facility includes education and hands-on repair and creation workshops at the ‘Tinkerage’, repaired goods sales, expanded polystyrene recycling, e-waste recycling, mattress recycling and Food Organics and Garden Organics (FOGO) reprocessing.

Cr Saliba said the community had supported the facility as far back as 2009, when community consultation got underway.

She said Council recognised the need to meet the NSW waste avoidance and resource recovery targets and decided that a state-of-the-art resource recovery facility would be a key inclusion in the city’s waste management.

During the consultation phase, Council received over 2300 responses of which almost 90% were supportive of the development of a best practice transfer station facility that included diverse recycling and resource recovery opportunities such as FOGO.

Cr Saliba said the numbers supported the new transfer station’s ability to recover resources and minimise waste.

“Recycling volumes are up 47%, including the FOGO facility, while waste to landfill is down by 3500 tonnes, which is 64kg per household per year. These are results the community can be proud of,” she said.

Surveys conducted at the Resource Recovery Centre indicate that approximately 80% of customers had an improved appreciation of the site’s ability to divert waste from landfill and recover important and finite environmental resources.

Media enquiries: Kelli Wells 0448 361 008.