Instant Waste Management: Waste Sustainability in Action

Western Australia’s most innovative and well-recognised waste management company, Instant Waste Management, provides industry-leading solutions to a wide range of customers. Its 140 trucks and 20,000 bins service metropolitan Perth and regional Western Australia, in the Northwest and Southwest of the state.

The company provides waste management services to the construction and demolition industry, small and medium enterprises and to the private and residential sector. It also works with local governments and the state government to provide disposal solutions for all types of waste streams.

Instant Waste Management plays a crucial role in Western Australia in promoting educational and recycling initiatives with its customers and members of the public. In recognition of these efforts, Jake Hickey, Instant Waste Management’s State Resource Development Manager won the National GreenSmart Professional award in 2014.

Additionally, of the 12 categories in which the Western Australian GreenSmart awards are conferred, 11 were won by customers of Instant Waste Management.

Instant Waste Management has installed a state-of-the-art facility that separates waste into its reusable components. The Material Recovery Facility is acknowledged as one of the most efficient automated waste recycling systems in operation in Western Australia.

The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has an on-going relationship with Instant Waste Management to host a tour of its Material Recovery Facility as part of the World Green Building Week. This joint endeavour is a yearly feature. GBCA members were encouraged to attend the tour, which was designed to illustrate the possibilities in waste management and recycling.

Instant Waste Management provides its services to several sectors that generate waste. Some of the company’s main customer segments are:

Construction and demolition sector

A number of Western Australia’s largest and most successful residential and commercial building companies engage Instant Waste Management to help them manage their construction and demolition waste. IWM’s expertise is put to good use in minimising the environmental footprint of building companies. In addition to this, they benefit by a reduction in their waste disposal costs.

IWM’s years of experience in the field of waste recycling provides residential and commercial building companies the means to achieve a cost-effective and sustainable solution for the collection, disposal and regeneration of the entire range of waste they produce. IWM has expertise in handling waste building rubble, sand, timber, steel, paper and cardboard.

Collection and disposal of hazardous waste materials are other critical services on offer. IWM uses its technical skills to help dispose or recycle materials such as paint, oil, rubber tyres and asbestos. If these are disposed of in an inappropriate manner, great harm can result to the environment.

The company also provides cardboard recycling bins and commercial and industrial removal services for general and liquid waste.

IWM offers companies help in meeting their compliance requirements and corporate sustainability targets. Its waste testing and reporting services and quality assurance systems for the testing of recycled material are of great assistance to its clients.

Corporate clients

Many of IWM’s corporate customers are working towards achieving a Green Star certification and require help in achieving sustainability targets to meet the stipulated requirements. They need services related to recycling, waste management planning, waste reporting and reporting on the amount of carbon dioxide emissions saved by using recycled products. IWM has an expert level of knowledge in this domain and this is highly appreciated by its corporate clients.

In acknowledgement of IWM’s expertise in waste disposal and recycling, the Green Building Council of Australia has appointed the company to their Western Australian state industry working group. The GBCA State Industry Group is an advisory group with representatives from local government, commercial construction companies, facility management organisations, environmental consultants and the waste recycling industry.

The GBCA State Industry Group serves to receive information and updates on key GBCA activities and disseminate them to members. It also provides the GBCA with feedback to assist it in delivering outcomes in accordance with its strategic objectives.

Small to medium enterprise customers

Most small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generate low volumes of waste that can be collected and disposed of by their council. But there are other SMES who produce large quantities of waste and IWM is ideally positioned to help them. The company provides a comprehensive range of waste management solutions for SMEs that includes scheduled collection of general waste, paper and cardboard, liquid waste and other types of rubbish.

IWM services small businesses, manufacturers and other SMEs that require a cost-effective and highly competent agency for waste disposal. The company can arrange waste pickups on a daily, weekly or as-needed basis.

Private and residential skip hire

IWM also serves private customers and offers them the facility to hire skip bins. These services are available in the Perth metro area as well as Northwest and Southwest Western Australia.

Homeowners find the company’s services especially useful when they are renovating or landscaping.

Waste management at events

IWM is well-equipped to handle the large amounts of waste generated by major events. It has handled a number of such assignments and its staff ensures that the site is cleaned and restored to its original condition in the shortest possible time after the function is over.

The company has handled the waste management activity for the City of Perth Australia Day Skyworks in the three years from 2013 to 2015. It carried out these assignments with great efficiency and also ensured that the percentage of waste that was recycled increased each year.

Material Recovery Facility

Western Australia currently diverts less than 50% of Construction & Demolition waste away from landfill. C&D waste makes up the majority of waste buried into landfill and the WA Waste Authority has now set targets to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill sites by diversion of 75% by 2020.

In keeping with IWM’s strategies to improve these targets, Jake Hickey said, “We listen to our customers and they traditionally prefer to use one skip bin. To accommodate this we invested in an integrated system that can process and sort large volumes of mixed C&D waste”.

IWM has commissioned an automated Material Recovery Facility that has helped the company improve the diversion rate of waste away from landfill from 70% to 80%-90% or more.

The Material Recovery Facility uses the latest available technology incorporating state-of-the-art processing equipment. Conveyors covering over half a kilometre, maximises the recycling of mixed C&D waste that has been collected and measured by IWM.

Speaking about its features, Jake Hickey says, “We’ve recently invested heavily in a new state-of-the-art facility that enables us to recycle very high levels of the co-mingled waste collected from construction and demolition sites across the state.

“One of the things we’re very pleased about here is the synchronicity of the system, enabling everything to move fluidly through the line and basically batch load large quantities of waste through and recycle pure quality materials out the other end.

“So we have metal that’s turned into reinforcement, wood that gets turned into composting materials and mulch and sand that gets turned into clean fill recycled sand. Finally, we have a crushed aggregate mix made up of concrete and clay.

“In summary, we’re hoping to achieve higher levels of recycling. In the past, we’ve won awards for a 70% recycling and diversion rate away from landfill. This new facility will be able to handle more volume, operate for shorter time periods and easily achieve marks around the 80%-90% mark, with the end goal in the long term future being zero landfill.”

To assist its customers’ compliance with the Green Building Council of Australia’s Green Star program IWM provides waste reports, verified by independent professionals for acceptance in a Green Star projects’ C&D waste credit submission.

Readers can view a video of a go-pro camera make its way through the recycling plant as Jake Hickey explains the features of the material recovery facility.

Awards

IWM is the recipient of a number of awards in appreciation of the work it has done for protecting the environment. In 2013, it received the Central Eastern Business Association Award for the ‘Best Environmental or Sustainable Business’. As the Chair of the not for profit ‘Dob in a Dumper’ committee, IWM was recognised for the group’s outstanding action to reduce illegally dumped waste.

The company won the GreenSmart ‘Partnership’ award in 2008 and 2009 and was awarded the GreenSmart ‘Resource Efficiency’ award in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Rapid growth on the cards

Jake Hickey observes that growth in the waste management sector is a result of increased demand for recycling that is partly fuelled by the corporate social responsibility activities undertaken by companies. There is also a significant increase in the number of projects being registered with the Green Building Council of Australia and this creates further demand for IWM’s services.

Another factor that will result in an increase in business volumes for IWM is the increase in landfill levies that will be implemented in Western Australia. For certain categories of waste, the rate, which was at $28 per tonne has been increased to $55 per tonne with effect from January 2015.

This rate is scheduled to be further enhanced in stages till it is at $70 per tonne in July 2018. As a result of this, construction companies and other organisations that generate large amounts of waste will be incentivized to recycle and reuse as much of it as possible.

Western Australia’s government is committed to taking all possible steps to preserve the environment. It has imposed high penalties for those who do not follow the rules laid down for disposal of waste. Individuals can face fines up to $62,500 and corporations may be required to pay as much as $125,000 for not following the rules regarding waste disposal.

Instant Waste Management is ideally positioned to take advantage of the expected increase in demand for waste disposal and recycling services. The company’s competent and experienced staff and the large fleet of vehicles it owns and other infrastructure, most notably its Material Recycling Facility know-how, will ensure that the company is able to capture large volumes of new business.