Innovative project supported by Ministry of the Environment
20/08/2018
Associate Environment Minister Eugenie Sage has announced a Waste Minimisation Fund (WMF) grant of nearly $3.1 million.
“It is pleasing to be able to support an innovative project that is a significant step toward delivering Auckland businesses with viable alternatives to landfills.
“This is an essential part of reducing waste across the region, and I am confident that Green Gorilla’s project will provide opportunities for new businesses that utilise the recovered materials, bringing new jobs.
“As a country, we need to be thinking smarter about ways maintain the value of our resources, taking circular economy approaches to design waste out of the system. This facility will provide a fundamental change in the way Auckland’s commercial and industrial waste is managed.
“The large expense of new infrastructure and the ability to take advantage of technologies used overseas can be beyond the budgets of local businesses, and that is where our WMF shows its strengths,” Mrs Sage says.
Green Gorilla’s CEO, Graeme Bowkett said that “the company will construct a large scale commercial and industrial waste sorting facility at its Onehunga site which will allow it to recover, reuse or recycle commercial and industrial materials alongside its existing construction and demolition sorting facility. The highly mechanised plant will double the overall capacity of the site and allow the company to offer additional cost-effective landfill diversion services to its thousands of Auckland customers.”
The WMF provides financial support to projects that reduce environmental harm and provide social, economic and cultural benefits. It is funded from a levy charged on waste disposed of at landfills to discourage waste and to support waste minimisation initiatives. More than $92 million has been awarded to more than 150 projects to date.
Projected Commercial & Industrial waste diverted from landfill (defined in green).
ABOUT THE WASTE MINIMISATION FUND
The Waste Minimisation Fund (WMF) is funded through the waste disposal levy on material which goes to landfill. It was introduced under the Waste Minimisation Act 2008.
Fifty per cent of the money collected from the levy is distributed to councils to spend in accordance with their Waste Management and Minimisation Plans.
Te Pūtea Whakamauru Para - the Waste Minimisation Fund supports projects that increase the reuse, recovery and recycling of materials. This helps reduce waste to landfill, one-off use of materials and litter. The goal is to move from the linear take, make, dispose approach to a circular one focussing on make, use, return principles.
The fund invests in a wide-range of projects from infrastructure investments to behaviour change and hapū/community-centred projects.
GREEN GORILLA INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL WASTE PROCESSING FACILITY
The most modern waste processing plant of its kind in Australasia.
The largest commercial and industrial waste processing facility in New Zealand.
Capable of diverting over 30,000 tonnes per year of Auckland commercial and industrial waste from the region’s landfills – that’s about the same weight as 100 747 jumbo jets.
The facility cost $9.5M and was supported by a $3.1M contribution from the Ministry for the Environment’s Waste Minimisation Fund.
It uses a series of augers, screens, density separators, eddy currents and optical sorters to separate different types of waste for reuse.
Depending on volumes of recyclable material and commodity prices, the optical sorters can be programmed to sort a variety of waste streams.
The Commercial and Industrial plant runs alongside Green Gorilla’s Construction and Demolition Waste Processing Line. It has been in operation since 2012 and has diverted approximately 250,000 tonnes of waste from Auckland’s landfills since its operation.
Green Gorilla provide Auckland Recycling & Waste Solutions.
