What happens when a mining engineer looks in his trash can?
He doesn’t see trash. He sees ore. Ore
is just what David Singh sees in the 11 percent of Sydney’s rubbish that his
company, Global Renewables is contracted to process each year. Global
Renewables’ goal is to extract the highest value from Sydney’s municipal waste
stream and that is what they have been doing at their Eastern Creek Facility
for almost a decade. Under a pay for performance contract the company is paid
for tons diverted from landfill. The video explains how it works.
The company
can divert better than 65 percent of the tons that hit its scales each
day. Beyond commodities recycling, the
company produces a high grade compost with the growing power of cow manure. Key
take away from my trip to Australia, nothing grows crops like cow poop, but I
probably could have learned that from Nathan and Larkin (2012 Eisenhower
Agricultural). There are some serious
take aways from my morning with David and Global Renewables’ John Lawson.
Policy matters - The state government charges a tax of aboutAUS$95 for every ton of solid waste tipped into the landfill, which creates a
significant financial incentive for local governments to send as little as
possible to landfill. Since the 1970s
Australia has banned incineration so waste to energy plants are not currently
in operation. This factors combine to make
the Global Renewables process viable.
The original project included producing energy from anaerobic
digestion of the waste to power the plant. That portion of the project has been
moth balled following the crash of the Australian renewable energy credit markets
and changes in carbon tax accounting.
Passion matters – David is passionate about his work and so
is his team. When the company had to shut down for six weeks during a legal
battle over a key contract, nearly 50 team members had to be laid off, all but
2 returned as the company got back on its feet. There are many great mission
statements, principles etc, but passion is embedded right in GR’s vision and values. Their values include that “every employee
starts each day with a sense of purpose and ends each day with a sense of
accomplishment.” That statement is resonating well this month.
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