VinsBins involved in the latest VWMA annual conference

VinsBins attended the annual Victorian Waste Management Association (VWMA) conference to hear first-hand updates and focus area’s currently occupying the industries attention.

The industry of rubbish removal is a multi-faceted one, involving many people from many walks of life.  Victorian’s generate approximately 13 million ton of waste per year, which reflects the importance of the waste industry for  our environmental health.

VinsBins manages rubbish removal in the Construction & Demolition sector, making a small contribution in what is approximately 44%, or 5.3 million ton, of Victoria’s total waste generated per year.  Demolition work and commercial and residential construction are significant sources of waste, with material including brick, concrete, soil, plaster, timber, steel, glass and cardboard packaging all contributing to this.

However, when most of us think of rubbish removal it is our household wheelie bins that come to mind.  This is known as Municipal Solid Waste and includes plastics, food waste, other organic, green waste, nappies and some e-waste.  This accounts for 24% of total waste managed in Victoria annually.

The last major waste source is from the Commercial & Industrial sector, which is the rubbish removal from offices, government agencies, manufacturers, schools, hospitals and small to medium enterprises.  This sector generates 32% of Melbourne’s waste and is the predominant user of the enclosed lidded bins seen behind many restaurants and shopping centres due to the nature of this waste and the potential odour and vermin attracted to it.

For this year waste conference, it was interesting to hear from entrepreneurs in food waste and liquid waste who are taking a scientific, and at times, quite radical, approach as they look to be sustainable with their own rubbish removal practices.

The Victorian government has a few key focus areas that they highlighted on the day.  One is managing e-Waste, with the aim of stopping e-Waste from entering landfills and increasing the recovery of valuable resources.  Another focus is the organic opportunity, with food waste and green waste currently accounting for 42% of what enters Melbourne landfills.  There is a massive opportunity here to convert this residual waste, using advanced technology, to a form of energy, which will be a huge step in us being more sustainable in our rubbish removal methods on a broad scale.

The final rubbish removal focus on the day was highlighted by Sustainability Victoria.  They are currently preparing a market development strategy for used tyres, with a vision for creating profitable domestic outlets for tyre-derived products that stimulates recovery and contributes to preventing stockpiling and illegal dumping.  We have all heard about the fire danger of stockpiling tyres, so any mass scale market that wants them will be of tremendous incentive to those operators that are currently storing them.

As the above summary highlights, rubbish removal is varied, often complex, reliant on many businesses and is undergoing much change.  Technology continually improves, there is a growing interest and increase of people in the industry which brings in fresh ideas, and there is a real appetite in the community to not see rubbish as waste, but as material able to be re-used for a future use.

It is an exciting industry to be involved in.