A new ACT recycling facility to replace the Hume site gutted by fire during a lithium-ion battery thermal runaway late last year is not expected to be operational until mid 2026.
This means the ACT will be in no position to help the Commonwealth with its efforts to ramp up its current national recycling rate, which currently sits at a dismal 16 per cent.
A new tender document released on Wednesday has called for an "interim solution" for processing Canberra's recycled material, spanning a period from mid 2024 to mid/late 2026.
The former Hume Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), which opened in 2016, had been receiving around 63,000 tonnes annually of recyclable material from the kerbside around the ACT, as well as material from six regional NSW councils.
But the huge Boxing Day fire last year, which investigators found was triggered by lithium-ion batteries entering the waste stream, breaking up and igniting a fire which swept through the facility, has caused a significant and costly disruption.
As a result of the fire, the existing building has been deemed too dangerous to use. Baling and sorting has been done since outside the plant, with the baled mixed recycables then trucked to plants in Sydney for processing.
"The current business continuity solution has caused a significant increase in costs for recycling services since the fire occurred - mainly due to transfer operations in the territory, additional transportation cost of transporting delivered material to interstate MRFs and higher gate fees at the interstate MRFs," the tender documents state.
This truck-out system of operation will continue under the new arrangement, with the proposed ACT "changeover site" required to hold no more than 30 kilotonnes.
A tender for the building of a new Materials Recovery Facility will be let in the third quarter of this year and it appears that the government is now set on using the same Hume site, as the tender document states that the "damaged MRF site is anticipated to close in June 2024 for the rebuild to occur".
The Commonwealth government will contribute $21 million to this new plant, which is aimed at processing around 115,000 tonnes per year, almost double that of the destroyed facility. Secondary processing, such as plastic washing and glass crushing, is being investigated for the new plant.
Under the terms of the interim tender, the operator of the "changeover" site will be required to comply with a number of very strict requirements, including a defined EPA-approved, high-efficiency transportation plan for the trucking of the material, to keep the material "as clean and dry as possible", and to keep exhaustive records on its environmental compliance.
The target specified in the tender is an 85 per cent recovery rate of all material - which slightly exceeds the requirements of the 2019 national waste recovery plan - with the rest going to landfill.
Should the successful tenderer not hit achieve the key performance indicators, there will be a "performance deduction" of $2500 for each month they are not achieved.
The minimum expected annual volume of recyclables to be handled by the successful tenderer under the two-year contract will be around 40,500 tonnes, but as much as 22,500 tonnes could be added through separate agreements with other parties, such as local councils.
The hugely expensive and disruptive Hume MRF fire revealed the hazardous flip side to the ACT embracing electrification - that of more lithium-ion batteries prevalent throughout the community and the risk of them entering the waste stream.
Any stockpiles of material dumped at new "changeover" site will require compliance with the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authority's fire safety in waste management guidelines.
This guidelines states that "the facility should cater for a large emergency service response (e.g. multiple alarm and multiple agency) if the potential hazard may result in a large emergency".
