New Recycling Facility

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

The new recycling facility in Canberra will:

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

Overview

The New Recycling 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 existing 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 in December 2022 and is no longer operational.

The current contractor, Re-Group, will continue to provide recycling services until the new facility is finished.

Since the fire, the ACT Government has been transporting the ACT’s recycling material to 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.
• Improved and expanded baling processes for Container Deposit Scheme materials.
• 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

An Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was created for this facility.

The EIS considered environmental, social and economic impacts.

Community engagement on the draft EIS was undertaken in 2023.

A draft EIS was lodged with the Planning Authority and publicly notified.

A development application will be required for the facility. This will have a public notification period.

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• Email the project team at InfrastructureCanberra@act.gov.au

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