Materials Recovery Facility

Funding: $26 million for planning and development (co-funded by the Australian Government)

The Materials Recovery Facility in Canberra will:

• create higher quality recycled products
• reduce the amount of waste ending up in landfill.

Current Update

• Demolition of the old facility was completed in November 2025.
• Pending Development Application approval, construction of the Materials Recovery Facility will commence in 2026.
• The new facility will be operational in 2028.

Overview

The Materials Recovery Facility will sort:

• paper
• cardboard
• glass
• plastic
• steel
• aluminium

The facility will have high resource recovery to reduce the amount of waste ending up in landfill. Processing up to 115,000 tonnes per year, it will provide for future growth and population increases.

It will be located on the same site as the previous facility on Recycling Road in the Hume Resource Recovery Estate.

Veolia has been appointed to design, build and operate the new recycling facility.

A new facility is needed after the existing recycling facility was damaged by fire on 26 December 2022 and is no longer operational.

The current contractor, Re-Group, will continue to provide recycling services from a separate site in Hume until the new facility is finished.

Since the fire, the ACT Government has been transporting the ACT’s recycling material to several interstate material recovery facilities.

Community benefits

• Advanced sorting to better separate, identify and segregate recycling to higher purity levels, reducing contaminants for better quality end market products.
• An upgrade to data collection, management, and analysis systems.
• State-of-the-art fire detection, mitigation and control systems to safeguard the site from fires.
• Flexibility to incorporate new innovations, improvements in technology and adapt to changing recycling priorities and materials.
• A new education facility for the community.
• Wastewater capture and reuse, and stormwater management infrastructure to achieve environmental compliance.
• New data sorting technology to capture what materials are coming through the facility and the quality of the materials.

Community engagement

A Significant Development Application (SDA) no. 202644904 has been lodged for the Materials Recovery Facility.

The community can submit feedback on the DA by visiting the Territory Planning Authority’s website.

The final EIS was approved by the Planning Minister in November 2025.

Reports and publications

Final Environment Impact Statement [PDF 5.8 MB]

Stay up to date

• Subscribe to receive updates on the project.
• Email the project team at InfrastructureCanberra@act.gov.au

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