Harry van Moorst is a veteran community activist. In the 1960s, he protested against the Vietnam War. In the '70s and early '80s, he was active in the anti-uranium movement. In the '90s, he helped lead a successful campaign against a toxic dump proposed for Werribee, in Melbourne’s outer-western suburbs.
Van Moorst is exactly the sort of local warrior whom the proponents of a waste to energy plant feared could be a thorn in their side.
But instead he is a cautious supporter of the proposed plant.
The plan, by Recovered Energy Australia, would convert household rubbish (from the bins that go to landfill not recycling bins) into a gas that would generate enough electricity to power 20,000 homes.
Van Moorst, the director of the Western Region Environment Centre, stresses there is a waste hierarchy.
The first thing we should all be doing is reducing our waste. The second thing is recycling it. But van Moorst says the residual household rubbish - the stuff that ends up in our non-recycling bins - is better off going to a waste-to-energy plant than landfill.
“Waste mountains are building around Werribee,” van Moorst says.
“Landfill doesn’t process waste effectively, it creates a massive amount of greenhouse gases, of which only 60 to 70 per cent is captured and flared off. Landfill leaks could end up creating major problems for future generations in terms of groundwater and land contamination.”
Van Moorst says the gasification plant proposed for an industrial area in Laverton North is probably world’s best practice in managing residual waste.
“It is really just another type of factory,” he says. “I think there will be some concern because of the risk of emissions but studies would suggest they can be pretty well controlled.”
Thermal waste-to-energy plants are a popular method of rubbish disposal in many parts of the world.
Waste can be burned in giant incinerators or, as with the Melbourne gasification proposal, heated to the point it converts into a combustible gas.
Most waste to energy processes generate electricity or heat.
In Europe, where more than 500 waste to energy plants account for 27 percent of municipal waste, emissions must adhere to strict standards set by the European Union.
However, waste-to-energy plants remain controversial in Australia, which still sends almost 40 per cent of its waste to landfill.
In July, a contentious plan to build a huge waste-to-energy incinerator in western Sydney was dumped after an independent panel ruled there was “uncertainty” over health and environmental impacts, including emissions.
“Waste to energy is established across the world including Europe, Japan, China and the Middle East but it is yet to get off the ground in Australia,” says David Cocks from waste experts MRA Consulting Group.
Cocks says modern plants that comply with European and Australian emissions standards are highly unlikely to have a detrimental impact on health: “Household fireplaces probably produce more concerning emissions”.
However, he says there is still a stigma associated with incinerators, dating to those built in Australia in the 1920s and '30s, when pollution control was primitive and neighbourhoods were blanketed in soot and dust.
“There has been a significant community backlash against a few proposed waste to energy facilities,” Cocks says. “The community needs to be engaged and brought along with the journey.”
There is nothing like a crisis to focus the mind.
In 2017, China, which had previously imported half the world’s exports of recyclable plastic and paper waste, signalled it would no longer be the world’s garbage dump.
Its National Sword policy banned 24 types of waste - including some plastics and paper - and set a tough new standard for contamination levels.
The ban has affected about 99 per cent of the recyclables Australia previously sent to China.
The federal government is poised to release six national targets to tackle Australia’s waste crisis, including that 80 per cent of waste be diverted from landfill by 2030.
Environent Minister Melissa Price said Australia's environment ministers had agreed in April to explore opportunities to advance waste to energy as part of initiatives to grow Australia's waste and resource recovery industry.
However she emphasises: "This commitment ... prioritises reduction, reuse and recycling strategies over energy recovery."
On Thursday, Price announced the government would provide $23 million in grant funding and up to $90 million in debt finance through federal agencies for Australia's first large-scale energy-to-waste plant outside Perth.
The plant, which will divert up to 400,000 tonnes a year of waste from landfill, is expected to open by the end of 2021.
Australian Council of Recycling chief executive Pete Shmigel says it is good to look at waste-to-energy as a better alternative to landfill, but stresses it must not be seen as a replacement for recycling.
“Waste-to-energy can be complementary to reduction, reuse and recycling, rather than their replacement, but we need to make sure the right policies are in place.”
For many Australians burning waste is synonymous with the acrid-smelling backyard incinerators that blighted suburbia. This practice was banned about 40 years ago due to air pollution.
“The community has historically thought of waste-to-energy as very nasty incineration,” says Shmigel.
“That perception - which is outdated - has slowed things down. But perhaps going slower hasn’t been a waste of time, as it’s allowing us to get the balance right. That balance makes sure modern waste-to-energy, like the kind in Parisian suburbs, fits into an overall waste minimisation approach.”
But in June a Senate committee report - Never waste a crisis - raised fears that state and federal governments were signalling their support for waste to energy as the primary solution to the current crisis.
“Burning recyclable material is not a solution; it is surrender. Incinerators only make use of material for their calorific value,” the committee, which was made up of Coalition, Labor and Green senators, says.
The report argues that incinerators are not compatible with a circular economy, in which waste is reused again and again.
“Having earned the public’s support for recycling, the government needs to ensure that recycling is maintained as a policy priority,” it says.
Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson says his big beef with incineration is that it locks in bad behaviour.
“We want to move toward a zero waste future,” he says. “That might be a very bold ambition but we want to see people changing the way they consume and producers changing the way they produce materials.”
Whish-Wilson says government has an important role to play in changing behaviour through mandatory regulation and providing incentives for recycling and reuse, including mandatory targets to phase out single use plastic.
The Boomerang Alliance is a waste pollution group that does not believe thermal waste to energy plants should play any role in managing waste.
It says there is a risk of toxic emissions and residual waste, the plants are expensive, produce little energy and will be opposed by local communities on health and environmental grounds.
Critics also contend that burning rubbish cannibalises recycling. A report by the Green Party of England and Wales in July found that England was on the brink of burning more rubbish than it recycled for the first time.
It’s the hungry beast syndrome: “Investors in incinerators require long term supply of material,” says Boomerang Alliance convenor Jeff Angel. “They want 20 year contracts for waste and the critical problem is the material is often recyclable for a much higher value.”
However European countries with the highest recycling rates tend to be the ones that also incinerate residual waste.
The Netherlands has the sort of waste management figures that makes Australia, well, green with envy. Just 2 per cent of waste in the Netherlands goes to landfill, 81 per cent is recycled and 17 per cent is incinerated to make energy.
“Waste does not exist,” is the smug slogan of Dutch waste company van Gansewinkel. What it means is that waste has become a commodity - the Netherlands even imports rubbish from Italy and the UK.
But in the early '90s the Netherlands had its own waste crisis. The tiny country (Australia is about 186 times bigger), with a population of 17 million, literally ran out of room for its rubbish.
“New landfill sites did not get licenses because of public opposition and we had to close down five of our waste management plants because of dioxins,” says Herman Huisman, an advisor to the Dutch government who was invited to speak at this month’s Waste Expo Australia.
“Some of the provinces didn’t know what to do with the waste it had collected in the morning.”
In 1991, Huisman was asked to head up a waste management council charged with solving the crisis at a national level.
At the time household recycling rates were low and 50 per cent of waste was diverted to landfill.
The Netherlands moved swiftly.
In 1994, it became compulsory for organic waste - the largest proportion of household waste - to be collected separately. It was then used for composting or to generate electricity or gas instead of going to landfill.
A year later, a tax was introduced on landfill and the Dutch were warned it would increase significantly every two years. “The main policy of the government should be to put economic incentives to make recycling attractive,” Huisman says. “This also gives certainty to investors.”
Forty-five different forms of refuse are now banned from landfill.
Huisman says waste to energy is a very accepted way of treating residual waste that can’t be recycled. “The facilities in Amsterdam operate far below the allowed level of emissions. The air coming in is dirtier than the air going out,” he says.
However, increasing taxes on incineration - the rate will be doubled to 32 euros a tonne next year - means recycling remains the preferred option.
Huisman says Australia is 20 to 25 years behind the Netherlands with its waste management: “You can close this gap in a shorter period of time.”
One of the main themes explored at this month’s Waste Expo Australia was whether Australia has finally reached the waste to energy tipping point.
A significant roadblock is the lack of financial incentive. “Unfortunately ... landfill is ridiculously cheap in Australia,” says Mike Ritchie, the managing director of MRA Consulting Group.
Waste levies are also inconsistent across each state. The levy in NSW costs up to $140.20 a tonne but is free in Queensland after the Newman government axed the state's levy in 2012.
This has led to thousands of tonnes of rubbish from NSW being dumped in Queensland landfills. (Queensland will introduce a levy of $70 a tonne early next year.)
“The same levy in Europe is going to cost $150 to $200 a tonne - it sets a different benchmark,” Ritchie says.
“The same landfill in Europe is going to cost $350 to $400 a tonne - it sets a different benchmark,” Ritchie says.
“If the government wants energy from waste they are going to have to lift landfill prices. That’s the bottom line. That is true whether it is energy from waste or resource recovery and recycling.”
Ian Guss, a director of Recovered Energy Australia, says it would certainly be easier for them to move much faster if the waste levies were higher.
But he is ready to push ahead with the gasification plant in Melbourne's western suburbs. "We think we are in a position now where we could be cost comparative with landfill."
The plan is now seeking approval from Wyndham City Council and EPA Victoria. Guss hopes the plant will be in construction by July next year.
He recently visited a fishing village on Shengsan Island in China, which had built a gasification plant using the same technology.
Previously, the village had been forced to fill a barge with its rubbish and ship it offshore.
"The barge would sit in the harbour - I don’t know if you have ever been near fish when it’s been in a rubbish bin at 40 degrees but it certainly gets on the nose."
Guss says the villagers - who had initially been trepidatitious about emissions, noise and odour from the plant - couldn't be happier.
"They have now built a lookout over the top of the plant as the best place to see the sunset and are looking at using the steam to process fish."
Guss hopes his proposed gasification plant will also become something of a showcase, with a visitor's centre and possible collaboration with universities.
"If we don’t do something now, given the lead times involved getting these plants up, we will be committed to landfill for another 15 years."
"There is", Guss says, and apologises for his own corny pun, "no time to waste".